The new reality of old media

Cable TV was a perfect storm. The number of channels that needed old movies and TV series to fill airtime almost exactly matched the number of worthwhile shows that were available.

Which meant that A Wonderful Life, The Wizard of Oz, Seinfeld and MASH could be cornerstones of the culture for decades, not simply a few weeks or months.

A fan could reasonably expect to see them all.

Two things have changed for books, music and visual media:

1. Shelf space and broadcast schedules disappeared. There’s room for everything, all the time.
2. The cost of creating and publishing work in any of these media has dropped to zero. When anyone can make a video or a song, anyone will.

The long tail keeps getting longer. Which is fine, except it undermines our expectation that the culture has a center, that the people you’re with have seen and read what you’ve seen and read.

And it shifts the economics as well. Assets aren’t worth what they used to be, and the focus of attention is erratic and unpredictable.

Better is elusive, more is not in short supply and it’s even more of a guessing game than it used to be.

July 20, 2024