Even as Media Atomize, It's Blockbusters-Take-All
As you kick back for the Grammys, Oscars and other award shows this season, consider this: You are watching the consolidation of entertainment around big hits and blockbusters, not its democratization. As The Economist reports in a series of articles, the broad decentralization once imagined – where bloggers and indie bands had the same access to the masses as The Economist and the Rolling Stones – has not occurred.
The lead article explores how as a business, entertainment has 'in some ways become less democratic, not more":
Technology is making the rich richer, skewing people’s consumption of entertainment towards the biggest hits and the most powerful platforms. This world is dominated by an oligarchy of giants, including Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix and Disney (as well as Alibaba and Tencent within China’s walled ecosystem). Those lacking sufficient scale barely get noticed. … Anita Elberse, of the Harvard Business School, working with data from Nielsen, notes that in 2007, 91% of the 3.9m different music tracks sold in America notched up fewer than 100 sales, and 24% only one each. Just 36 best-selling tracks accounted for 7% of all sales.
Even though the definition of blockbuster has changed – today’s top television shows attract a fraction of the audience that “All in the Family” did in the 1970’s – the all-or-nothing environment pushes providers (not just networks but Netflix, Amazon, HBO, Showtime, etc.) to new heights. “For now, the competition among studios and video programmers is delivering more high-quality television for everyone than ever before.”
Other articles in the series flesh out these observations. One piece examines how technology has unleashed that vigorous competition, noting the sharp decline in the viewing of broadcast and cable TV by Americans; it dropped by 11 percent for all age groups during the last the six years and a whopping 40 percent for those aged 12-24 during that time period:
Market penetration of pay TV in America has slipped from nearly 90% in 2010 to just over 80% as people abandon cable altogether (cord-cutters), switch to less expensive packages (cord-shavers) or never sign up for pay-TV bundles in the first place (cord-nevers).
Another article explores how the proliferation of suggestion algorithms – if you liked that you might like this – reduce competition and choice by taking “some of the adventure and serendipity out of hunting for new entertainment, and rarely nudge a customer towards anything way off his radar."
The series also looks at the obstacles encountered by developers of virtual reality systems; how some individuals – the legendary “YouTube sensations” - are able to achieve fame in this new media environment; and the enduring popularity of live events, especially music and sports as well as theme parks, in a cyber world.
The series concludes with a short article on how relatively new technologies, especially smart phones, “have made it harder for people to form connections with each other, or even to be at ease on their own.”
Read the full series here.
