I sometimes wonder if this isn't a fairly common practice in numerous industries. For instance some time back I was watching a show on US cable television. Vikings on the History Channel, in particular. Aside from the completely obnoxious icons and labeling everywhere, about 5 minutes into the show advertisement pops up literally in the middle of the screen consuming about 25% of the screen space. And that was enough for me to immediately move onto other things, as that's worth less than the $0 price of admission. Incidentally the web version is amazing, has more content, is better quality, has no ads, and something I would generally highly recommend - underrated series.
While cable TV, and cable news in particular, has been rightfully demonized, it makes me wonder if they're really just happy to target themselves down to a demographic that is willing to tolerate this nonsense. And perhaps this demographic might also respond more favorably to advertising, influencing, and other corporate ends.
The same thing has also happened in the movie industry as well. If you think the vast majority of modern movies suck, it would not necessarily just be because of nostalgia or other effects. The modern movie viewer demographic has changed radically and thus movies are being made for these people. Even more interesting is that movie ticket sales are down hard, but they're somehow convincing the new demographic to pay even more which actually means that gross receipts have been stable and even increasing at times.
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Of course there's also a chicken and egg question. In the movie industry for instance, did movies change because the demographic changed, or did the demographic change because movies changed?
I wonder how much we undervalue audience segmentation when analyzing social network profitability. Twitter and reddit’s perpetual issues making money could be that they index too highly for cynical people who trust no one, while Facebook does gangbusters indexing highly for people desperate to make a connection.
While cable TV, and cable news in particular, has been rightfully demonized, it makes me wonder if they're really just happy to target themselves down to a demographic that is willing to tolerate this nonsense. And perhaps this demographic might also respond more favorably to advertising, influencing, and other corporate ends.
The same thing has also happened in the movie industry as well. If you think the vast majority of modern movies suck, it would not necessarily just be because of nostalgia or other effects. The modern movie viewer demographic has changed radically and thus movies are being made for these people. Even more interesting is that movie ticket sales are down hard, but they're somehow convincing the new demographic to pay even more which actually means that gross receipts have been stable and even increasing at times.
--
Of course there's also a chicken and egg question. In the movie industry for instance, did movies change because the demographic changed, or did the demographic change because movies changed?