(2006-11-21) New Media Culture Clash

Jesse Walker on the Culture clash between MSM and New Media. Last summer, as the explosive popularity of YouTube became obvious to the older media companies, the marketing department at the Cartoon Network decided to use the site to promote its shows... Unhappily, some of the people who noticed the videos worked for the Cartoon Network's legal department, who mistook their colleagues' new marketing tactic for an unauthorized appropriation of the firm's intellectual property. They promptly sent cease-and-desist letters demanding that the clips come down... The most telling moment came when she described a business meeting she (Betsy Morgan of CBS) and some colleagues once had with Apple Computer. The details of the deal aren't important. What's significant was that, by Morgan's own account, the TV people were caught up in pleasing all their stakeholders, while the Mac man was concerned solely with improving the consumer's experience. It's a pretty good snapshot of the difference between a company that sells eyeballs to advertisers and a company that sells tools to the audience... Caterina Fake suggested that there is a "general exhaustion with mass Consumer culture," and that less passive forms of entertainment are arguably the natural state of affairs - it wasn't long ago, historically speaking, that quilting bees and front-parlor music occupied the space now filled by movies and television... On one panel, Henry Jenkins quoted a screenwriting acquaintance: "When I started, we pitched stories, because you had to have a good story (Story Telling) to make a good film. Then I pitched characters, because a good character could sustain multiple sequels. Now I pitch worlds (World Building), because a rich world can support multiple stories about multiple characters across multiple Platform-s."