Michael Jackson Overload
The Pew Center for Media surveyed the Cable TV networks last week.
Fully 93% of cable coverage studied on the Thursday and Friday following his death was about the King of Pop.
Were not talking about Entertainment Tonight here–this is CNN, MSNBC, Fox News they are measuring.The TV News executives are so attuned to the Hive Mind that if they stopped feeding Michael Jackson news and started reporting Iran, the hive mind would tune to another channel. Bill Wasik (Flash Mobs) talked about this to Salon a couple of weeks ago.
Instead, it’s like this giant hive mind will pluck out something that you’ve done and say, this we love, this we bestow the pleasure of 2 million hits on. From there on out, you’re going to use those cues you get from this giant machine to tell you what to keep doing and to tell you what to stop doing. And that to me is potentially scary in all sorts of ways. The hive mind selects for a certain kind of thing, it selects for culture that is instantly digestible, it selects for culture that is sensational in a certain sort of way.
If all news and all culture has to be sensational, then we’re fucked.
I’m going out in the woods to take a long quiet walk.
This entry is going to get soooo many hits.
This entry is going to get soooo many hits.
Despite the air crash in the Indian Ocean and the announcements from Iran *legitimizing* the election results, Good Morning America dedicated most of the morning to MJ. Despite the deaths in Iraq, the US Congress had a moment of silence for MJ. We’re fucked alright in that media-spread obsession is the new herpes.
I say a grass roots organized national day of solidarity held by the citizens of the US for the citizens of Iran makes a real statement. Don’t invite the government, don’t make pleas for ‘acts of resistance’, IOW, don’t give the Iranian mullahs a single edge. Show solidarity. Show respect. Show the people in the streets of Tehran that despite our pathetic greed grubbing self-centered mainstream media, we heard their screams, we saw the deaths, we know and we won’t forget.
Getting any of the news outlets to cover it means we have to sacrifice a live goat on live TV or Angelina Jolie has to come with a quiver, a bow and her right breast bare.
The tawdryness of the week amazes even me. On the other hand, there is a clear pushback from all over the blogosphere.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2009/06/27/beyond-celebrity-obsession/
As usual with Doc, the web is the solution and that is part of the overall short sightedness. Everyone is recruiting Death to their own chess game expecting to win.
Despite the air crash in the Indian Ocean and the announcements from Iran *legitimizing* the election results, Good Morning America dedicated most of the morning to MJ. Despite the deaths in Iraq, the US Congress had a moment of silence for MJ. We’re fucked alright in that media-spread obsession is the new herpes.
I say a grass roots organized national day of solidarity held by the citizens of the US for the citizens of Iran makes a real statement. Don’t invite the government, don’t make pleas for ‘acts of resistance’, IOW, don’t give the Iranian mullahs a single edge. Show solidarity. Show respect. Show the people in the streets of Tehran that despite our pathetic greed grubbing self-centered mainstream media, we heard their screams, we saw the deaths, we know and we won’t forget.
Getting any of the news outlets to cover it means we have to sacrifice a live goat on live TV or Angelina Jolie has to come with a quiver, a bow and her right breast bare.
The tawdryness of the week amazes even me. On the other hand, there is a clear pushback from all over the blogosphere.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2009/06/27/beyond-celebrity-obsession/
As usual with Doc, the web is the solution and that is part of the overall short sightedness. Everyone is recruiting Death to their own chess game expecting to win.
seems to me that CNN and other news channels have lost their way and have become swept up in popularity vs utility and importance. Anyone have any ideas how to get back to serious journalism?
seems to me that CNN and other news channels have lost their way and have become swept up in popularity vs utility and importance. Anyone have any ideas how to get back to serious journalism?
Start teaching real journalistic ethics again. When I took the courses, my instructor emphasized that advocacy in journalism was yellow journalism.
But as long as CNN and its ilk are profit centers, and as long as we are happy with them when they go into the tank for this or that issue or political candidate, as customers and consumers, we aren’t holding up our end of the deal.
So first thing, turn them off, tune them out and drop in to a local Internet caffeine dispensary to see what the locals think is important. Until one understands the local environment, understanding the global one is like knowing everything that goes on at church and nothing in your kid’s bedroom.
Start teaching real journalistic ethics again. When I took the courses, my instructor emphasized that advocacy in journalism was yellow journalism.
But as long as CNN and its ilk are profit centers, and as long as we are happy with them when they go into the tank for this or that issue or political candidate, as customers and consumers, we aren’t holding up our end of the deal.
So first thing, turn them off, tune them out and drop in to a local Internet caffeine dispensary to see what the locals think is important. Until one understands the local environment, understanding the global one is like knowing everything that goes on at church and nothing in your kid’s bedroom.
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!
It seems a little naive to think that a for-profit industry would be operated in a non-profit mentality. If you want non-profit thinking, you have to be non-profit.
Or, let’s say that that is also naive and it’s going to be for-profit thinking forever. If you want better alignment of the audience to the content, you have to have a better matching system of content to eyeballs. To lower risk, all of the executives seek a slice of the same big, guaranteed pie.
What the for-profit news sector doesn’t have is a long-tail mentality, or even a basic sense of counter-programming. If the networks can learn to put women’s movies on opposite Monday Night Football, some enterprising news programmer ought to be able to figure out to put Iran, Madoff, Sotomayor, etc. opposite MJ.
For anyone not familiar, it seems clear to me that we are dealing with another example of Hotelling’s Law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law
It’s besides the point to talk about this as an issue of morality, decency, culture, etc. That train has left the station. What does make sense is to point out that the business model is flawed.
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!
It seems a little naive to think that a for-profit industry would be operated in a non-profit mentality. If you want non-profit thinking, you have to be non-profit.
Or, let’s say that that is also naive and it’s going to be for-profit thinking forever. If you want better alignment of the audience to the content, you have to have a better matching system of content to eyeballs. To lower risk, all of the executives seek a slice of the same big, guaranteed pie.
What the for-profit news sector doesn’t have is a long-tail mentality, or even a basic sense of counter-programming. If the networks can learn to put women’s movies on opposite Monday Night Football, some enterprising news programmer ought to be able to figure out to put Iran, Madoff, Sotomayor, etc. opposite MJ.
For anyone not familiar, it seems clear to me that we are dealing with another example of Hotelling’s Law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law
It’s besides the point to talk about this as an issue of morality, decency, culture, etc. That train has left the station. What does make sense is to point out that the business model is flawed.
“If the networks can learn to put women’s movies on opposite Monday Night Football, some enterprising news programmer ought to be able to figure out to put Iran, Madoff, Sotomayor, etc. opposite MJ.”
It’s called the News Hour, and it’s on PBS. Oh, I know that certain individuals will shriek with horror, clap their hands over their ears, and chant their mantras to ward off the Evil Eye, but the News Hour is to CNN what Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma’s house is to a Taco Bell Intestino Grande. It’s not perfect but it beats the living hell out of everything else I know of on TV.
On the day that His Lordliness died, while the networks were soiling themselves with excitement, PBS devoted about five seconds to it. Then it was on to a long piece on the banking industry.
“If the networks can learn to put women’s movies on opposite Monday Night Football, some enterprising news programmer ought to be able to figure out to put Iran, Madoff, Sotomayor, etc. opposite MJ.”
It’s called the News Hour, and it’s on PBS. Oh, I know that certain individuals will shriek with horror, clap their hands over their ears, and chant their mantras to ward off the Evil Eye, but the News Hour is to CNN what Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma’s house is to a Taco Bell Intestino Grande. It’s not perfect but it beats the living hell out of everything else I know of on TV.
On the day that His Lordliness died, while the networks were soiling themselves with excitement, PBS devoted about five seconds to it. Then it was on to a long piece on the banking industry.
Dan, I like PBS as well. Probably the highlight of my academic career was being a featured guest on Science Friday on NPR. But let’s not kid ourselves, News Hour is about as sexy and interesting as well, Science Friday. It’s made for an audience with a long attention span, significant education, and sometimes an utter disdain for human interest. It couldn’t have any less mass appeal if it worked at it. I don’t think we have to go that dry to defeat the problem at hand. Not only could News Hour have broader appeal without selling out, there is room for middle ground between it and the majors’ approach here.
Dan, I like PBS as well. Probably the highlight of my academic career was being a featured guest on Science Friday on NPR. But let’s not kid ourselves, News Hour is about as sexy and interesting as well, Science Friday. It’s made for an audience with a long attention span, significant education, and sometimes an utter disdain for human interest. It couldn’t have any less mass appeal if it worked at it. I don’t think we have to go that dry to defeat the problem at hand. Not only could News Hour have broader appeal without selling out, there is room for middle ground between it and the majors’ approach here.
Turn off the fucking TV. (Sorry, this whole thing really makes me crabby…)
Turn off the fucking TV. (Sorry, this whole thing really makes me crabby…)
But the News Hour with a little BBC usually does the trick for me. That on top of a steady, daily dose of NPR, and I’m fit for company. The rest of the them give me Agita.
But the News Hour with a little BBC usually does the trick for me. That on top of a steady, daily dose of NPR, and I’m fit for company. The rest of the them give me Agita.
Hmmm makes me glad I don’t have TV anymore…but like I told someone here, a meteor could hit New York and the only thing that people would care about is the public viewing of Michael Jackson.
Hmmm makes me glad I don’t have TV anymore…but like I told someone here, a meteor could hit New York and the only thing that people would care about is the public viewing of Michael Jackson.
Yeah, and 10 years from now, they’ll be doing another retrospective. Just like they did for Diana. “It’s 10 years later” Newsflash…she’s still dead and he will be too. Sorry to sound so callous, but it’s not like these people were my friends or relatives…and it’s not like anyone is doing a 10-year retrospective on Mother Teresa or anyone else who actually made a real difference in the lives of others.
Yeah, and 10 years from now, they’ll be doing another retrospective. Just like they did for Diana. “It’s 10 years later” Newsflash…she’s still dead and he will be too. Sorry to sound so callous, but it’s not like these people were my friends or relatives…and it’s not like anyone is doing a 10-year retrospective on Mother Teresa or anyone else who actually made a real difference in the lives of others.
I’ll just leave this right here:
“If the world’s biggest pop star only made $25 million a year in total, something’s very, very wrong. Where’s the rest of the money? Why can’t a resource as scarce as the King of Pop capture more value? The world’s top hedge fund “managers” regularly pull in hundreds of millions. That’s an order of magnitude difference. No wonder everyone wants to be a banker, investor, or [insert beancounter here]. There’s no money left in anything else. That’s the big problem behind the zombieconomy. We don’t reward people for creating, growing, nurturing, or even remixing assets. We just reward them for allocating the same old assets.”
I’ll just leave this right here:
“If the world’s biggest pop star only made $25 million a year in total, something’s very, very wrong. Where’s the rest of the money? Why can’t a resource as scarce as the King of Pop capture more value? The world’s top hedge fund “managers” regularly pull in hundreds of millions. That’s an order of magnitude difference. No wonder everyone wants to be a banker, investor, or [insert beancounter here]. There’s no money left in anything else. That’s the big problem behind the zombieconomy. We don’t reward people for creating, growing, nurturing, or even remixing assets. We just reward them for allocating the same old assets.”
I have Google maps on my iPhone. It shows me realtime traffic data on any freeway I choose. I don’t even have to ask. It’s just there. Always.
So why on Earth would I ever tune into KCBS with ‘traffic every 15 minutes’, sandwiched in between commercials for dish soap and muffler repair?
That point and more is made here, in an excellent piece on the future of scientific publication by Michael Nielsen. What’s remarkable about his analysis is how well it applies to a broad range of enterprises dominated by pre-internet organizations that were build around tightly controlled flows of information.
Their inability to adapt is not due to stupidity, or arrogance, or greed, or malice. It’s because they were optimized for a world that’s vanishing rapidly, and that the amount of pain they’d have to suffer in order to transform themselves is more than enough to kill them outright. Consequently, decisive advantage falls to those with the greatest of all assets – a blank slate.
The bottom like is that whatever you think of the MSM is going to matter very little in the coming years, because they are already toast. The culture, the people, the organizations, everything. It’s going to be gone in very short order.
And my suspicion is that the people who can do the best job visualizing data, and providing humans with dynamic maps (especially of abstract things like economic variations and fluctuations in levels of political influence) will become the new news.
I suspect that a lot of the MSM’s fascination with the MJ story isn’t just a function of the hive-mind. It’s also the realization that his heyday and theirs were very closely aligned, and that they both owed the power enjoyed at their respective peaks to the same underlying conditions.
It’s like a last hurrah. In the same way they won’t get another star this big, they probably won’t ever get a chance to publish an obit like this one either.
Moving on.
I have Google maps on my iPhone. It shows me realtime traffic data on any freeway I choose. I don’t even have to ask. It’s just there. Always.
So why on Earth would I ever tune into KCBS with ‘traffic every 15 minutes’, sandwiched in between commercials for dish soap and muffler repair?
That point and more is made here, in an excellent piece on the future of scientific publication by Michael Nielsen. What’s remarkable about his analysis is how well it applies to a broad range of enterprises dominated by pre-internet organizations that were build around tightly controlled flows of information.
Their inability to adapt is not due to stupidity, or arrogance, or greed, or malice. It’s because they were optimized for a world that’s vanishing rapidly, and that the amount of pain they’d have to suffer in order to transform themselves is more than enough to kill them outright. Consequently, decisive advantage falls to those with the greatest of all assets – a blank slate.
The bottom like is that whatever you think of the MSM is going to matter very little in the coming years, because they are already toast. The culture, the people, the organizations, everything. It’s going to be gone in very short order.
And my suspicion is that the people who can do the best job visualizing data, and providing humans with dynamic maps (especially of abstract things like economic variations and fluctuations in levels of political influence) will become the new news.
I suspect that a lot of the MSM’s fascination with the MJ story isn’t just a function of the hive-mind. It’s also the realization that his heyday and theirs were very closely aligned, and that they both owed the power enjoyed at their respective peaks to the same underlying conditions.
It’s like a last hurrah. In the same way they won’t get another star this big, they probably won’t ever get a chance to publish an obit like this one either.
Moving on.
Just to give you guys a point of reference to how the other world sees this. MJ, the King of Pop, was the crowning achievement of US cultural hegemony in the late 80s over most of the world.
Jon Taplin says the the US must return to being an exporter country right? Sadly this physically and psychologically injured black man was, and still is, one of USA’s major exports.
Just to give you guys a point of reference to how the other world sees this. MJ, the King of Pop, was the crowning achievement of US cultural hegemony in the late 80s over most of the world.
Jon Taplin says the the US must return to being an exporter country right? Sadly this physically and psychologically injured black man was, and still is, one of USA’s major exports.
Hello? You got this scary quote from where? MSNBC? CNN? Fox? Oh, Salon.com? So stay tuned to salon.com and ignore the others!
The MSM choose to chase the resonant frequency of the hive mind. Not just the “bottom of the barrel” but the bottom of the spectrum. They are trying to *be* pop stars themselves, so they put themselves through the same kind of ritual humiliations that “reality” TV contestants do. The rest of us can hum along to various overtones barely audible to the MSM’s core audience. That’s where most of the mind lives anyway. It’s in the upper frequencies of the EEG, not the lower ones
In the present, for example, folk musicians: it’s your ability to do it live in a virtual venue.
Grace McDonnough is playing in her Metaplace lounge tonight which is a live VR room embedded in a web page or standalone. It’s Flash and some other cheap software otherwise. It’s an event with buzz.
Reiterating what I said to Rick, media and medium are forcing us back to the simplest possible setups to perform to maybe a hundred people at a time (what a virtual world server can typically handle). But for those who CAN deliver live in front of a mic, that hundred people can be ANYWHERE in the real world for that performance.
We keep thinking the web is about web pages. It’s Alive. The Hollywood Palace and the streaming sitcom are here. Advanced game puppetry will be the storytellers most advanced medium not just for machinima but live.
It isn’t that TV or radio are irrelevant. It is that video and sound can be used so differently and as Kovacs discovered with TV, the art migrates to the opportunities of the medium. It takes the business model time to catch up.
One wonders how much the lack of news coverage of the Iranian revolt and the overwhelming Twitter response to MJ’s death are responsible for the increased effectiveness of the crack-down?
Maybe because of Jackson dying, Iran will stay under the wretched control of the hard-line Mullahs for even longer…
Meanwhile, I saw Richard Thompson perform brilliantly to a packed theater of about 750 people on Saturday night. The real deal…no smoke, no mirrors, just a man, his guitar, a few pedals, and then his daughter joined him singing and playing a guitar borrowed from me… Now that was a thrill.
This to me says more about the MSM than anything else. It says very little about the “hive mind” itself.
If we were to equate the hive mind to an actual human mind, then Jackson’s death is like witnessing an accident.
At that moment all your mental faculties are focused on that. You might have been on the way to the bank, talking to your girlfriend on the cell phone and a ton of other things.
But your mind shuts down all those other mental faculties for the duration.
It doesn’t mean that minutes later you’re unable to resume your conversation with your friend. or that you’d forgotten you’re on your way to the bank and what you have to do there.
The same goes for the hive mind – it may be “focused” on Jackson’s death for a few days – but we still get on with our lives. visit the same sites, have the same conversations, do our work and pursue our politics.
The hive mind has not ceased doing everything else because of Jackson. In fact if there were actual news from Iran – as there were two weeks ago – the hive mind would divert it’s attention there too.
However, the MSM, by definition, focuses on that which grabs the masses’ attention – the most viewers at any given moment.
This has nothing to do with journalism, but only to do with the nature of the mass-media beast.
It’s not scary. It’s just a fundamental misunderstanding of the functioning of a hive mind.
oh, and: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVACUjHn6yU
Michael Jackson is Dead
And somehow we are stuck discussing it, too.
And thanks Armand for making the distinction clear. Thank the gods MSM is not really our minds. Unless, of course, it’s our minds on eggs.
This string is a total tonic.
And Rick, I’ll say this for Richard Thompson: he hasn’t got a bone in his nose.
“One wonders how much the lack of news coverage of the Iranian revolt and the overwhelming Twitter response to MJ’s death are responsible for the increased effectiveness of the crack-down?”
Lights are off and the cockroaches are scurrying. You may be right. The use of the social networks left tracks. How much of that they traced is anyone’s guess.
They really need us to turn the media lights back on. It seems the MSM has moved on because they can’t get their eyeballs on the street, nothing bloody has been delivered to them, and they aren’t usually the ones to track a slow moving wagon picking people up.
The question is how much impact the events of the last month left on the resolve of the Iranian nationalists who believe an open society is the best and fastest way to achieve global reach both in terms of trade and international alliance through respect instead of theocratic devotion to insularity.
Our founding fathers were above all, practical men with impractical goals but they saw in the moment of the events of their day from 1763 onward the inevitable separation from the British Empire.
I like that. Also, it explains a lot.
Jon,
“If all news and all culture has to be sensational, then we’re fucked.”
Yes we are, on so many levels.
Do you discuss “perception management” in any of your courses?
I guess I see these MJ strings as studies in judgmentalism, including my own judgmentalism. Without reference to MJ’s personal life, his music is, here, justly up for grabs. Jon and others imply that he was touted beyond his talent. That’s certainly so. Who among us would admit that, say, Elli Wiesel likewise was overblown? My point is that it happens all the time, but at the center is still a person who has either something to say or else a fresh way to say the same old shit, or perhaps, if we’re lucky, something fresh to say in a new way.
To me, if an artist is an artist, I’m for her. I don’t quibble with the art; I want more artists and I want them to thrive. So you’re either an artist or you’re not. Michael Jackson was born infused with artistic talent. Sure, I wish he’d used his obvious gifts more originally, but at least he used them, to the delight of countless people throughout the globe (–er, glove).
Goodie for us that we know the difference between a true musician and an entertainer. But there’s much to be said for entertainers, and Jehovah knows MJ was one.
Yep, America is on the cusp of historic CHANGE:
1) Universal health care
2) Economic upheaval and downward adjustment of the American lifestyle
3) Cap and Trade — getting a handle on global warming
4) Reform of the financial industry.
5) Death of the big-city newspaper industry. Possible death of network and local TV news.
Personally, I haven’t written a single word about the King of Pop on my blog, and I don’t plan to. — Bernie
Too bad, Bernie, that you hadn’t written earlier to advise us of our proper national agenda in lieu of mourning one of our more absurd celebrities. If only your advice had come sooner, lest we–how shall we put it?–distract ourselves with expressions of the loss of a mere entertainer.
You’re quite right to remind us that during WWII there was no time for levity. Fully from December 8, 1941 until
Here’s some of the most sensible talk from someone who actually knew MJ:
http://men.style.com/details/features/full?id=content_9937&pageNum=1
Oh Jeepers, Rick, that’s just not fair. So what, that the man sought surcease from his dangerous Vitiligo; doesn’t mean that he wished not “to be black”. (By the way, what sense does that make in the context of a pysche whe spent his life as a James Brown wannabe?)
Ease up, bro. Let him be.
Sorry, I meant “who”, not “whe”. I’m not even sure that “whe” is a word, apart from, perhaps, skydiviers as the jump from aircraft…”wheee!”
Hugo, maybe you should tell that to Quincy Jones. I’m just the messenger here, not the author of the message.
But facial reconstruction? Nosectomies galore? Cleft chin modification? Skin peels and bleaching? I think Q knows more than we do…
Yes, I know, I know. And you’re right: you’re just the messenger.
Were I to have the privilege of a chat with Q, I doubt that MJ would be high on my list of talking points.
(Same goes for you, btw.)