The television landscape today often seems divided into camps. “Smart” shows versus “dumb” shows. Shows for the common folk versus shows for those “in the know.” Quantity versus quality. In the Seventies, intellectuals would sometimes proclaim, “I don’t watch television. Oh, I sometimes watch PBS…” Today, those people sound out of it. Things like symphonies [...]
Forever to Behold: Access to Pop Culture in the Digital Age
As I mentioned last time, I am finally delivering a long-promised post on the topic of the future availability of content. I’ll acknowledge up front that I am likely a voice crying in the wilderness. Most people like to consume mainstream content. They like movies with big names, they want music from the pop charts, [...]
Intro: Access to Pop Culture in the Digital Age
Recently, I realized that I still owe my readers a post, on the availability of content in the digital age. Now, that probably doesn’t sound very exciting, but what I’m really talking about is the whole big world of pop culture – movies, TV, comic books, music, video games, books, magazines, radio, websites – and [...]
“…the great masses of the plain people.”
My previous post, on whether TV is (or is not) better than movies, touched a little on the issue of true popularity. To be specific: What’s the difference between mass entertainment and niche entertainment? I don’t want to relitigate this, so much as go back and point out a few elements and highlight some previous [...]
Movies & TV = Apples & Oranges
Via Twitter, Jaime Weinman pointed to Noel Murray’s article over at the Onion AV Club: “Movies Vs. Television: The Tide Shifts Back.” In it, Murray addresses the claims (made over the past couple decades) that television has become better than the movies. I think there is a lot of ambiguity to this claim. Murray notes [...]