Important political developments took place over these last few months: the continuing debate over how to best reform our current profit-driven health care system, the appointment of judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and former president Bill Clinton’s diplomatic talks with North Korea, among others.
Although these developments may eventually have a social impact on the average taxpayer, at least indirectly, it’s some of the recent non-political developments that may play an important role in the day-to-day life of the average citizen.
Though there are signs of recovery in the worldwide recession, and the national outlook has tentatively shifted from grim to hopeful, we will not emerge from this most recent economic crisis unchanged.
Some powerful industries that we have taken for granted for years have experienced unprecedented stress; the movie-making industry, for one.
According to the Motion Picture Association of America, Hollywood has released 15.5 percent fewer movies since January of this year than it did during the same period last year. Actors are lucky to see even one-third the amount of money they would have seen per picture last year, and eight out of 10 banks that used to provide funds for independent production deals no longer do so. When you take into account the fact that California is fending off bankruptcy it becomes clear that there are fewer funds available for movie production localized in Hollywood.
How will this affect us, besides a drop in the number of new movie and television show offerings?
The link between advertising and video media might provide some illumination, since advertising wouldn’t exist if there was no correlation between advertising and consumer behavior. In fact, a majority of profits generated by networks that air television shows come from advertising, and advertisers have a hand in choosing the shows most likely to produce profits for themselves.
With a lack of banks funding high-budget movies and television shows, one might think that advertisers could fill that void, and in doing so, exert more control over what is viewed by the public in entertainment. However, ever since the development of TiVo, television viewers have been able to skip right over the advertisers’ beloved commercials.
Even more recently, with the rise of Internet media sites such as Hulu, among others, viewers have had more of a say over what shows are being aired than advertisers. Sites like Hulu depend on Internet traffic, and advertising options are not limited to those with high production costs.
I don’t know how the television networks, movie production industry and business advertising strategies will adapt to this new environment. However, it seems likely that in the future, entertainment and advertising may not be as closely intertwined as they have been in the recent past, and the emergent “dumbing down” of Americans to be good consumers may soon slow down.