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As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

economist.com

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Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#91

Post by dehrmann »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #44
the-dude wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on this? I don't get it.

I mean that Comcast, ATT and Verizon collectively own a large portion of US media corporations – including CNN and MSNBC. You can quibble about the semantics of ownership, but the control of media is concentrated in a small cluster of last century's monopolies. There is an infographic here: https://techstartups.com/2020/09/18/6-corporations-control-9...

> You can quibble about the semantics of ownership

AT&T spun out Time Warner and merged it with Discovery because it had no idea what to do with it or how to run a media company.

Comcast only bought NBC Universal in 2011. Only one major media company (and not even the biggest one) could arguably be a loss leader for a telco. The rest are doing their own thing.

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#93

Post by dehrmann »

hmsshagatsea wrote: post #13

How about hollywood starts making GOOD content again?

I was definitely spoiled by movies when I was growing up. Because of industry circumstances, 1999 was a very good year for movies. I can't think of recent movies that would be considered this generation's "Fight Club," "The Matrix," or "Office Space." On the plus side, there's currently a plethora of adequately entertaining movies for long-haul flights.

Some reading on 1999: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a23803/1999-mov...

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#94

Post by tayo42 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #51
tayo42 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tv is a better format for visual story telling then movies could ever be. now that we have streaming its not bound to time limits or irrelevant commercial pacing. The stories are longer and can be more in depth. Does TV get the best talent though? For some reason I thought they get paid less despite doing alot more work. All those actors from got went on to try movies afterwards.

More likely, in my opinion, is the the stories can also be too long and all over the place.

That's true, the potential is higher with TV I think think though. Story telling is a skill that anyone can screw up independent of the medium

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#95

Post by dragonwriter »

spiderice wrote: post #84
dragonwriter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even Bill Maher agrees. Bill Maher is a shallow elite contrarian, not a progressive that it would make sense to say “Even” about when he agrees with criticism of something perceived to be on the left.

I love how now that he disagrees he's suddenly "not a progressive".

I love that now that you encounter a position that I've held and expressed consistently for long enough that it could legally vote if it was a person, and which has been quite common on the Left for at least as long, you act like its a sudden change.

I get that he opposes some things sacred to the Right, and that to people on the Right that makes him Left, but...

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#96

Post by nitrogen »

jsjohnst wrote: post #57
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They kick out people who text or talk during movies and they were the first theater I heard of that served alcohol and food.

Only through coincidence of living where it was founded at the time, Warren Theater beat Alamo by about a year. I’m only mentioning as when it opened they had limitations I found interesting. The small swivel tabels at each seat apparently somehow failed THX certification so when they first opened, you’d have to set the plate of food in your lap. I found it incredible that the tables somehow had a bearing on the THX…

THX probably specifies a stat like RT60 reverb time, or EQ matching the target curve, or prominence of early reflections, and the tables (big flat reflective surfaces) probably threw off that metric.

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#97

Post by galaxyLogic »

citizenpaul wrote: post #47
grae_QED wrote: post #18

Good. I hope they all go out of business. Their predatory practices are the reason why social media is so toxic. I'm honestly amazed that companies haven't figured out that advertisements are far less effective than they claim to be and they are probably over spending on them [1]. [1] https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/research/resear...

> amazed that companies haven't figured out that advertisements are far less effective than they claim to be I was once asked to do some stats on the marketing effectiveness of a company I was at. Not my job but I really hated a couple of the people in the marketing dept so I went at the task anyway. I had long had suspicious that the advertising was mostly smoke and mirrors so I was glad to find out that I was right…

In my experience marketing people are very good at marketing themselves. :-)

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#98

Post by slibhb »

krapp wrote: post #87
ipaddr wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The forced unreal diversity makes things unbelievable. The black and white couple with only gay Asian children under 10 with a Latino teenager makes everything into a farce. All of those things happen but not all at once all of the time. It's labelled as progressive but it's regressive and mocks each minority group along the way.

> The black and white couple with only gay Asian children under 10 with a Latino teenager makes everything into a farce. That doesn't happen. No one is writing movies where people who aren't Latino just have Latino children to score "progressive points" or whatever. Interracial couples do exist. Asians and Latinos exist, and their portrayal in media isn't any more "progressive" than portraying any other race or ethni…

> I doubt there is anyone in any minority group who feels mocked by greater representation. But, as a Gay Black Asian Latino yourself, you can probably tell us what it's like.

Are you unfamiliar with the concept of tokenism?

To me and to many others, though not to you, certain parts seem to exist purely to collect diversity points. This seems like pandering to me, and I expect it is insulting to anyone who views it that way. For some people, being a token is even more demeaning than being excluded.

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#99

Post by throwawayboise »

kortilla wrote: post #27
ehnto wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's strange to me is that while YouTube seems to be stealing a lot of attention, the creators on the platform are so often complaining the platform and having to build out non-platform revenue streams in order for it to make sense. Is it that they expect more than their fair share, or is YouTube leveraging their creators more than they should, or are adblockers the issue? I'm not sure what it is, it just surprises…

Anyone can be a creator. You have to be pulling in millions of views from people that are valuable to advertise to (not all views are created equally) in order to make a career out of it.

And even then it's flash-in-a-pan stuff for the most part. My YouTube viewing very often consists of getting interested in a creator, watching a lot of their stuff for a while, slowly getting bored as it gets repetitive, then moving on. This happens sometimes in weeks, sometimes in months, sometimes in only days. There's nobody I watch year after year.

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#100

Post by hmsshagatsea »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #77
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dune isn't going to suck because of the pandemic. It's going to suck because of the pg-13 rating.

What element of Dune do you think would suffer by not having an ‘R’ rating? It’s not as if the book is reliant on anything exceptionally violent or obscene. Probably the darkest element is the reference to The Baron’s rape of young people. Frankly that’s better off as something to be implied and not depicted. I think you can get away with enough in a PG-13 to suit the tone of this story. Watching the recent trailer y…

It’s not the R rating necessarily, it’s how they’ve sanitized the story. The whole book is rife with islamic/arabic and at least from the trailer they’ve anglicized everything, which doesn’t give me much hope. I really don’t see a reason for it.
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