New World Coming?

by Red Robinson

(What follows is my personal opinion. Some will be upset because this is a day and age where there is seemingly only one opinion — which is gospel — and other thoughts are forbidden. I welcome your thoughts. If you have been in high school or university in recent years, you may find this column unpalatable. You may not know it, but you have not been educated... you have been indoctrinated.)

I watched an old movie with awe the other night. It was the original Time Machine starring Rod Taylor and co-starring Vancouver's Alan Young ("Mr. Ed"). The movie was based on H.G. Wells' classic story of time travel. In the movie, Taylor arrives in the future where the world has been wiped out but nature has fully replenished itself. However, humans have been relegated to two surviving forms. One group is the Eloi, who more or less lack substance but play and graze like cattle. Then you discover why. The other group is underground and are called the Morlocks. They take care of the Eloi and fatten them up for feasting.

Yes, this underground culture has reached a new depth of evil where they have turned to cannibalism to survive and the Eloi are the human cattle. I likened the Eloi to the western world which is living in a trance, believing that evil will disappear if only we will negotiate with them, and I saw the Morlocks as the force that wants to wipe out the western world. But like so many times in the historic past, we are denying that anything terrible will happen.

This analogy extends to the business world today. With concentration of media control across this nation and in the U.S. in just a few corporate hands the complexion of this industry is under siege. Basically, five families control the majority of the mainstream media. By itself it is not necessarily a bad thing but when it comes to the practical side of things it makes a big difference.

When the aim of any corporation is to please shareholders and management first and the workers and audience second you can expect a backlash. Some corporations would like to have robotic mechanisms in place to replace the content talent in radio, print and newspapers. Let's face it... this is a cost saving way to operate.

More and more media operators are moving in this direction. To my way of thinking it is but a short term answer. Yes, profits will soar for a while but when you have cut staff to the bone the business begins to suffer. Staff begin leaving due to the strain of multi-tasking a job.

When you reach the bone, and there is nothing left to cut, what is your next step? I put this question to a few of my wealthy friends and they stated "this is a short term solution to increasing profits... but instead of taking the easy method have any of these cost cutters ever heard of increasing revenues?"

Of course, this is the more difficult path to follow.

Why does all of this concern me? Well, I love the media and I am a child of the media. It bothers me that young people today are not interested in pursuing a career in radio, TV or print because this is a smart generation and they can see that there is no future for them. They can also compare incomes. Take a broadcast student and a young person who has taken training in plumbing and compare their salaries two years after graduation. It is night and day.

Rafe Mair, in his opinion column in The Tyee online newsletter made reference to what he felt was a fact that political cartoonists Dan Murphy and Bob Krieger were to be let go by the Province newspaper. The Tyee made a correction and an apology and here is the quote:

"In fact, while Murphy and Krieger were told by the Province management that their cartoons would no longer be regularly published on the editorial pages of the Province, they were offered other positions at the newspaper as well as the option of leaving the employ of The Province with buy-out payments.

As soon as the facts came to the attention of The Tyee over the holidays, we corrected the Mair column. The Tyee subsequently removed the column from the site on Wednesday afternoon. We apologize for any confusion or distress the column may have caused members of the Province staff, management or readership."

How do you read this? It is a stated fact that they will no longer be published on a regular basis. They were offered other positions or they could leave with buy-out payments. If this isn't almost the same thing as Rafe stated, what is the difference? I smell legal complications with this one. To me, it is a typical example of cutting back on talent. Let me know your thoughts.

red@redrobinson.com
http://www.redrobinson.com/reditorial.htm

Although not yet quite the case as a powerful analogy, I am still reminded of a scenario where the bakers of one town, in order to cut costs and enhance profits, started baking and selling nothing but plain, white bread.

Consumers lost track of who was who and just went for the cheapest price. But soon enough, people lost interest is just plain, white bread and started seeking out alternatives.... and found them.

Kinda reminds me of what's been happening in media... Radio in particular.

Pardon my sawing an old log, but we have not had any favours done for us with the expansion in the number of stations allowed in a given market.  Too many outlets end up narrow-casting...each looking for a small niche in which they can excel.  However, few will get a big enough audience to be an attractive advertising medium on their own.  Thus, little companies are swallowed up by big ones who can collect enough signals with enough niches to hit the critical mass of combined audience.

This scenario is bad in a number of ways, for the small business owner, for the people who work in the industry, for the listener/viewer and, perhaps most importantly for the media as a mechanism to inform and mobilize.  

Radio and television aren't sexy anymore.

Gaming, computer programming, anything that's new technology-wise, that's what's sexy to kids.
If you make salaries more appealing, it won't help.  Plumbing pays well, but they can't get kids interested either.
The conglomerations are indeed shooting themselves in the foot by making the media more boring than it already is, but you can't just raise wages.  

Times change.  You either throw up your hands or you reinvent.