Freedom of Choice

Just got an invitation to an Oscar party. The whole academy awards thing is weeks away but if I can make, I'll go. It's nice to be with a group of frustrated and opinionated independent film makers.  There will be plenty of alcohol which almost guarantees a very animated discussion or two. You have to expect that among artists and would be artists.

As Joe would say -Hollywood has reached its high point and it's all downhill and nostalgia from here.  Joe bases that on the box office gross and attendance at movie theaters, over the last few years growth has slowed and flattened.  As Hollywood is like every other business, investors will be more cautious and conservative as the money flowing in decreases.  You can't be too provocative or challenging if every film has to pull its own weight.

Joe has been to Sundance and still harbors the dream of selling one of his films but hope is fading not just because he's getting older but also because the world really is changing. One art college is dropping its screen writing class for movies and revamping it for video game production. It's a cliché to say computers are changing everything but not only have they changed everything -the biggest changes are yet to come.

It's still fun to guess how the 5,800 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will vote. The last time I checked it was 77% white men with less than 3% African-American membership. The majority are between 50 - 60 years old with an average age of 62, only 14% are younger than 50. It's interesting to see how out sync that is with the rest of the world.  In a generation, maybe less, will this ritual be irrelevant or will it become a faded icon like a copy of Life magazine?

With a good internet connection and a big screen TV people are already giving up on the movie theater experience.  Movies, TV, radio, mail, news, shopping and socializing have always been available online -and these services are only getting better and easier to use. One of my sons was confused when I was going out to meet a friend at a local cafe, he suggested I should talk to them on Skype or Facebook. He couldn't quite understand why I was taking the time and trouble to see my friends in person.

My God... I'm starting to become the old codger that goes around saying "I remember when".

Sadly a few months ago the local radio station closed down. Part of its downfall was its broadcast frequency was on the AM bandwidth. The few AM stations that are still commercially viable are often religious, rural or talk radio formats. AM radio is disappearing, you can not buy a radio that solely receives AM and some manufacturers of AM / FM radios have dropped AM entirely. The same creeping decay is happening in FM too. My last trip to New York City and North Jersey was kind of strange as old stations try to fit into smaller and tighter niches so they could stay on the air. This is not earth shattering or even bad. On any wireless device there's access to thousands of other stations with an internet feed or thousands more who broadcast on the internet only. 

Don't misunderstand me -the internet is great but when everything is only few mouse clicks  away... well I feel something is lost in all that convenience.  

The internet has given everybody the opportunity to be a movie mogul, a TV producer, a radio broadcaster, newspaper or information service. The price of set up and entry is ridiculously low, making it a wide open market but it also creates a revenue stream that lavishly rewards a few stars and starves everyone else. Like in newspapers, the New York Times has become a global newspaper with more people around the planet reading it online and in print.  The New York Times has never been better but most local papers can't compete because they lost a third of their income when Craigslist made free classified ads available online.

  One concern I have is for news -I mean real news reporting. News is expensive to produce. At one time the FCC use to set up minimum rules for radio and TV news. This way one station couldn't have a economic advantage over another by skipping the news.  Each station had a civic and legal duty to broadcast it.  Without these rules news has become more opinion and gossip than investigative reporting and the blogosphere is a piss poor substitution for professional reporting -not because it's less sincere but because it has so much less resources. 

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Within 24 hours of posting this, I was sent an email how in the new I-Pad there are several lines of code for a planned "radio" app. In the next 6 months Apple will up and running a worldwide wifi radio network to promote I-Tunes over Spotify and Pandora. So in five years maybe there will only be three or four music services and actual broadcast radio will go the way of buggy whips. 
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One of those silly party games is to pick a category and ask each player to name as many things that would go in it. Most people have trouble getting beyond three things and it's very rare to get past five.  When the internet makes a handful of brand names, products, political ideas, entertainers  or anything else into  global icons -then what happens? Does it end up globalizing mediocrity and capping off new innovation? Do we really have a choice if no alternatives are offered?

The internet is making the global village possible but it's also eroding away local individuality. Maybe that is inevitable. All the benefits the online world provides is just too good to pass up.  As people have a natural need to socialize, the internet might not eliminate social contact but just change the texture of it. A new individualism could rise up to subvert  the internet and be a counterbalance to the 800 pound cultural gorilla we now invite into our lives every day.