Contempt

On a lighter note, Show Bidness, as seen through a lens smeared w/ an especially noxious substance that's guaranteed to make the subject look several yrs. older, or even invisible.

We were so excited by "contempt" that we missed "aging²," which is the actual offense against Americans & their heartland values, as Mr. Driscoll's lens clearly shows him.

This phenomenon of people getting "older" has not escaped the still-eagle-like eyes of concerned critics somewhat younger, we think, than Ed Driscoll, Hard-Boiled (You can tell by the hat!) Media Snoop. We also dipped into the subject of fading show revenue here; Ed was only a wk. late this time.

So we were all excited to find what absolute contempt Hollywood was holding us in. A greater scandal than kiddie-host X & his apocryphal open-miked "That'll hold the little bastards!" before the cartoon, or, or ... Surprise! Links:

Both industries have shown enormous contempt for wide swatches of their audiences

Wow. Get this, straight outta NewsBusters: Paul McCartney Compares Global Warming Skeptics to Holocaust Deniers; Says of Obama, 'I Really Love Him'

And if that's not enough, Colin Firth thinks about science or something. Bet he was sneering while he thought, too.

In case you've been living under a rock, or in your mother's basement, Ed The Hat is happy to fill you in on what's been happening:

The traditional music and film industries were created during the first half of the 20th century, when media meant mass media — by the 1950s, you had three channels on your TV, a handful of radio channels, and a couple of local movie theaters within easy driving distance.

Today you have YouTube, Blip, iTunes, Netflix, DirecTV, etc.

Therefore (Really. This is the very next paragraph. We shouldn't have interrupted the flow of logic.):

Concurrently, both the music industry and Hollywood have watched their stars age and decline. Most of the people we still think of as stars in both Hollywood and the recording industry date from the last days of mass media — and Hollywood in particular has been hurt badly by their decline.

Some of Hollywood’s biggest stars have simply aged: Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery and arguably Harrison Ford are all getting too long in the tooth to be leading men. Younger stars such as Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise severely damaged their careers during the preceding decade by publicly unleashing their inner demons. Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn and Robert Redford put politics ahead of stardom, damaging their brand in flyover country.

You see, the point here is, there's technological change, & the only people in Show Bidness that Ed Driscoll has ever heard of have gotten older, except the ones who were nuts or something to begin w/, so ...

So we dunno what. Did he think Clint Eastwood was going to make the transition to video games & YouTube shorts, & his failure to do so means Americans will now be putting all their entertainment dollars into paying off their credit cards?

Music industry afterthought:

On the surface, this doesn’t sound like it will bode well for Hollywood’s future. Essentially the recording industry, with its own aging stars and genres, faces many of the same negative structural trends as well.

Still not grasping the point, just the realization that Ed has a point on his head. No one's made a record or written a song since Milli Vanilli were run out of the biz? We may not like today's Gss Music From Jupiter any more than Ed would if he ever heard it, but we do have vague (sometimes painful) awareness of some noise out there on the Internet.

At last, at the end, a clue to the new direction:

Contraction is always painful for any business model; any thoughts on where these industries go next?

Heading to Goldberg-land. That explains the lack of there there.

Let's look at just a bit of a comment from maryann:

I proceeded to watch a few of the scenes in Singing in the Rain and as I watched I said to myself, God what amazing creative talent came out of America before the leftists of Hollywood took over with coarsening of the culture and the let’s hate America narrative.

Just imagine being trapped in such a tiny, fearful mind. Too bad that black-list didn't work, huh? And the silents were even better, but FDR killed them w/ his "Hate America New Deal," didn't he?

[Hope this holds 'em.]