Why I Continue to Watch Reality Shows, Or You Can't Fight the Future

When the first season of Survivor (the very first reality show) started, my friends here in Hollywood who write shows for a living loudly proclaimed that reality shows were taking dollars out of the writers' pockets, and therefore, they (insert footstomp here) were not watching them! Surprisingly, many of them still have this attitude (in Survivor's 20th season).

This week, I read an article which stated that MILLIONS of people who lost their jobs in this economic crisis were just simply never getting them back. These two items are related.

Simply put, the world is changing. You have two choices: Change with it, or die. Seriously.

You can say all day long that scripted television is better than reality television (and I would agree with that), but that won't make the networks stop putting cheaper programming in place of it. All writers everywhere can stop watching it, but does that make American Idol less successful? No, it just makes those writers out of touch.

People can argue about how pervasive the Internet is, and how really, they still love to curl up with their favorite newspaper on Sundays, but is that going to stop the iPad from becoming a dominant way to read books or what used to be printed content? No.

So you can stomp your feet and cling to your mainstream media and outdated jobs, or you can evolve and evolve now. The Internet is where it's at, folks, like it or not. People want media that's better, faster and on their phone. Whatever that is, and whoever provides it.

As much as big media hates this reality, people can find just as much enjoyment (you heard me, I said JUST as much) from a YouTube video of a cat playing with yarn, or a podcast created in someone's garage, as with whatever the Big Media is pumping at us currently.

Face it, principled writers: Dancing with the Stars is glitzy and glamourous and fun to watch. Survivor has some of the best location shooting and underwater photography on television. The Amazing Race travels all over the world, so you see cultures you'd never otherwise see. Every hugely popular reality show has good points.

This is our world now. Computerized, mechanized, at your fingertips 24/7. That is our entertainment. Those are our jobs. Come and get 'em. Or at least, quit your bitching about it. It's not going away.


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The Future of Radio...Really?

I just had a little dustup in the Twittersphere about the future of radio.

Aw, let me backtrack a little bit. Anyone who knows me and listens to my podcasts knows how much I love radio. I love radio passionately. I still fall asleep with my iPhone next to my ear, playing my favorite Internet radio station, much as I did with my little red transistor listening to CKLW back eons ago.

And anyone who knows me knows that I was laid off from my beloved newspaper job recently. I am, and have been all my life, a media maven. Gobbling up as voraciously as I could all forms of media: TV, radio, newspapers, magazines. Constantly they filled my little life. They were what I cared most about.

So it is with great sadness that I say again here, as I've said many times in my blog, my podcast, on my Facebook page, and on Twitter, that I think media, at least old school media that we used to know, is DEAD.

Newspapers are dead. Magazines are dead. Radio is dead. TV is on its last legs, and is trying to rejigger itself to the new medium which lives and has swallowed all of them whole: the Internet.

That is my stance, and my belief. Further, I believe that any of us who used to be in media should get our relative acts together and reappropriate them to the Internet or face our own destruction. There is no retooling of the old stuff to make it work. It's broken, it's gone. Let's all move on, shall we?

So, I came across this post from someone in media whom I did respect. Someone on Twitter who always posts enlightening, interesting posts (whom I will not name here). He was directing us to another guy, an old-school radio guy, who was proclaiming "The Future of Radio." In the dustup that ensued, the respected guy offered, "No, really. Just so you know, he's a new media evangelist."

hahahahahaha

And that means that he gets paid big bucks for offering his opinion on where we are at and where we are going? Really? Really now?

I checked out the man's blurb for this "Future of Radio" webinar. Here is the statement which stopped me dead in my tracks, openly mocking everything else that came after: "designing the format clock to maximum advantage." Really? That's what the future of radio involves? Continuing to perpetuate the scourge of radio foisted upon us in the 70s, the "format"? The one where you pick from A, and B, and C, to come up with a repetitive mix that is pleasurable to listeners? Really?

Does this man, this "new media evangelist" (oh, excuse me, "RAB Certified Digital Marketing Consultant" (choke, cough)) even own an iPod? And is the format-churning radio really relevant for anyone anymore? Are my facts wrong, or has radio been bleeding listeners like newspapers have been bleeding readers? Even the current format-oriented radio stations? Much less ones out there in the "future."

Boys and girls, the horse has left the barn. It's moved on to other things. And if I didn't have friends I care about programming radio stations, I wouldn't even be listening to the Internet radio I listen to now, I'd be surfing on Blip.fm and Pandora and any number of alternate music sources. To say nothing of the vast horizon of music-oriented podcasts out there.

The new media evangelist goes further to talk about "brand loyalty." Really? There is brand loyalty to old-school prepackaged radio stations? Hm. Not in my world. I cannot imagine any way you could "redesign the format clock" to make it work in my world.

The last terrestrial radio station I listened to, and loved, was LA's Indie 103.1 (and now listen to in its Internet format). One thing not having it around has made me really realize is that the whole premise that radio today is based upon: repetition to create "hits" is annoying as hell. I really don't wanna hear a song six times in one day. No matter the song, no matter how much I like it. For that matter, I don't want to hear it three times in one day. Once a day is just fine. Once a week is even better.

That's my preferred listening mode these days. I would venture to bet that most people follow along these lines. Having CDs in their car to listen to, walking around with their iPods or Zunes. Maybe radio plays in the background at a party.

It just kills me that someone gets big bucks for telling people how to put a finger in a dyke that's already burst. And furthermore, the man's picture on the promo piece is SKEWED. Sheesh. Some evangelist. Can't even get his Photoshop right.

What do you think?

So many articles and treatises written now about the death of newspapers. This is a commentary, partially, about one of them, written by John Battelle, formerly of WIRED magazine (http://battellemedia.com/archives/004781.php). 

In the thick of this first in a series of "death of newspaper" articles, he mentions how much Google wants to help the newspaper industry. They have money. They could give them money. All of this ignores what seems to be so very obvious. Why is no one seeing it? They state the facts, then they come back with: but what can we do about newspapers?

The facts being that everything about a newspaper that people liked/wanted, they can now find easier on the Web (classified ads, sports results, even breaking news, thanks to Twitter). Print costs much more than any webpage. And on and on.

So the answer seems simple. Close up the newspapers and move on. Was technological change ALWAYS this hard? Or, if you are a major newspaper like the New York Times, take the necessary steps, which they seem to be starting to do, into the online space. Make widgets. Give me a usable iPhone app with your newspaper on it. Make a newspaper viable for those who now live online.

As long as you continue to try to push square pegs into round holes, you'll continue to get nowhere, and technology will march on past you. It already is. People go with what's easy and cheap. Period. Especially in this Depression we are in.

And now you're going to start whining about the loss of "quality journalism" and "ethics" because we're on the Web. Well, I'll clue you. There are plenty of real journalists and ethical people out here in the Wild Wild Web. In fact, I would argue there are MORE people who hold politicians' feet to the fire out here. There are people who care. People who aren't fat and cushy from a cake job, but who've had to reinvent themselves, even daring to do it for no money (as many podcasters, myself included, have done). They do it because they have a passion about it. They do it because it needs to be done. They do it because they have a voice that no one else has.

Isn't that what newspapers used to be about? Where was the newspapers' hue and cry when habeas corpus got taken away from us in the last Administration? Just as one example?

Nobody sobbed into their beers when the grammophone died. Or when Betamax became a useless technology. Newspapers are gone, people. It's time for them either to get their butts onto the Web, where they can still make a difference, or move on.

Nothing is going to make newsprint and its delivery viable again as a business model. Realize it. Google should spend that money they want to throw at newpapers to create a real, viable newspaper on the Web. Cause people will never stop seeking fresh news. They have an insatiable desire to find out what's happening around them, in the world, which has gotten increasingly smaller.

The sad thing for the newspaper industry is that technologies like Facebook and MySpace and Twitter have made us realize that we can connect with people easier and faster and in more real ways than a traditional newspaper can offer us. And the news we find there is no less valid. In fact, it's more real because it hasn't been filtered through the corporation first.

So enough of all this whining. Let's move on. Newspapers are on the Web. Long live newspapers.