Hey Crumb, thoughts on Much Music? I stumbled across this article which proved to be a more engaging read than what I was supposed to be looking at for work.

https://thewalrus.ca/the-rise-and-fall-of-muchmusic/

Martin and director of operations Nancy Oliver would create the VJ system. VJs were the direct link between the viewer and the musician. They were like radio DJs—who not only knew their music but looked like the viewer.

Um, this is also incorrect.  MTV had "created" the VJ at its inception.  I mean, they were called "VJs", you know?  Knew the music and (mostly) looked like the average fan.

I understand the need to differentiate yourself from MTV, but there's some exaggeration.  Early MTV (81-83) was very different than later iterations, and much closer to the kinds of ideals that they champion with MuchMusic.  And even during the first flush of MTV's period of media dominance (84-92), it was still primarily a music journalism channel.  It wasn't until the success of shows like The Real World that the shift towards "scripted youth" programs and reality shows became the focus.  And this also coincided with a larger corporate consolidation across the music industry, with smaller labels and radio stations being devoured by the likes of Seagrams and Clear Channel.  By 1997, the joke was that MTV started "M2" because they had nowhere else to play actual music anymore.  Clearly, by the mid-late 00s, I don't think anyone had any pretense of MTV being a music channel at all.

Rock wrote:

Hey Crumb, thoughts on Much Music? I stumbled across this article which proved to be a more engaging read than what I was supposed to be looking at for work.

https://thewalrus.ca/the-rise-and-fall-of-muchmusic/

I loved it at the time. It was proudly cheap and made by weirdos and felt like you were always eavesdropping in on a bunch of people running television station. There is something perfectly Canadian about looking totally  half-assed but feeling real and honest that it really excelled at .

And, unsurprisingly, it all turned to shit when dumb fucks with their demographic charts start dictating what people are supposed to like, instead of just trying to make something they think is good.


The article clearly gets when and why it all turned to shit.

Jinnistan wrote:

Responsible for launching the careers of Bryan Adams and Nardwuar?  Gee, thanks, guys. 

Whatever one might think of his schtick, Nardwuar consistently gets great interviews. He's a national treasure.

It reminds me of a similar situation on American cable, where big conglomerates like Viacom began buying up favorite niche channels, everything from Sundance (indie films) to G4 (tech/games), dismatled most of their original programming and rendering them into venues for non-stop reruns of everything from standard 80s action films to Law & Order.  American cable still looks like this today, just a wasteland of seemingly random block programming of the lowest common denomination of library IP and second-hand reality TV episodes.  You see this all along the so-called 500 channels.  Even at the once prolific Comedy Central, in the past few years they've shifted about 80% of their programming to all-day South Park and The Office reruns.  This article's suggestion that there's something particular about this devolution of media ("undervaluing of the arts") to Canada strikes me as misguided.  (The fact that these channels need to promote that they're "content-driven", as if that's some kind of exciting new strategy, is quite telling.)

The basic way this exact same result worked in Canada was, initially, we understood who we were when it came to what we created in house. We worked within our limitations and made things which were cheap and that would have little chance of being sold to the States, but we didn't care. Then, fuckwads like this Schwartz character, began to believe in order for Canadian television to matter, it not only had to emulate the content of American programs, but it also should try and match them in their slick, professional quality. Which is essentially not possible here, and we end up creating exactly what anyone with half a brain should expect: content which now is completely vapid and lacking in any kind of national character or personality AND still looks like shit. Then, when it dawns on them that their strategy was stupid as fuck, they just import the American content they were copying and run blocks of reruns of these shit shows they can buy the rights for cheap.

It's basically a disgrace, and knowing creative people who were ground to dust in the mechanics of these Schwartz-fucks stupid plans, makes me furious to this day.
 

Jinnistan wrote:

Brad Schwartz appears to be the primary villain in this story.  Look at this asshole:

If MuchMusic and MTV do their job right, then they are like a high school: all they have to do is be important for those four years that you’re going through it. Once you’re out of the demo, you shouldn’t watch it. You shouldn’t like it, because now we’re focused on the kids that are here. If you’re forty years old and still liking Much, then we’ve grown old with our audience instead of staying perpetually young. You shouldn’t be watching MuchMusic anymore. It’s not for you anymore.

It's interesting because, as a "kid" watching MTV in the 80s, I always assumed that the desired audience wasn't high school, but rather college.  "Young adults", not teenagers.  SPIN magazine, for example, was focused on college radio and 20-somethings.  It was a presumed truism that high school kids, generally, didn't have developed tastes yet.  And in fact the reason why high school kids in droves tuned in to MTV was to see what the cool young adults were into.  But this is just an example of Schwartz's marketing idiocy/fallacy, and it doesn't even involve the more glaring issues such as the utterly foolish presumption that music is necessarily only relevant to the generation in which it's made. 

But "kids", especially in the insecure throes of high school, are reliable suckers, easily persuadable 'marks', eager consumers, and therefore quite an ideal marketing demographic.  Schwartz reveals this in his cult-like seminar-speak: "When you’re just constantly focused on what young people are interested in, then you can create a brand and a content mix that will forge an emotional attachment."  Note that it's implied that it isn't the music itself to which his audience becomes emotionally attached, because Schwartz does not "create" music.  The advertisers don't look to musicians or other artists for "ahead of the curve" trends, but to "brand-creator" shopkeepers who act as gatekeepers for other people's creativity.

It shouldn't be difficult to see why this is a strategy doomed to fail.  "Kids" who want to be cool already assume that whatever's cool is not what they are already aware of.  Kids won't tune in unless they're curious about finding new shit, which is counterintuitive to those who live and die by demographic research.  But maybe this self-flattery model of generational marketing is working better for the 'Z's?  I'm not sure.  But the magic of marketing is less about figuring out what people want and more about learning how to convince people of what you want to sell them.
 

These are exclusively the kinds of thinkers that rise to the top in Canadian television (and I'm sure, American television as well). Which isn't at all surprising since all the arts, from movies and music and even gallery culture with the fine arts, is populated with these aggravatingly confident know-nothings. And there is definitely something to be said for this notion that they try and pull all of the credit away from the artists making the actual content, and try and make it about themselves driving people towards the garbage content the inevitably create.

They should all be drowned in toilets.

(via The Onion)

Leonardo DiCaprio Tears Fabric Of Universe Apart Attempting To Have Sex With Girl Not Yet Born

LOS ANGELES—With space and time ceasing to exist amid the actor’s cries of “Too old! Too old! They’re all too old,” Leonardo DiCaprio reportedly tore apart the fabric of the universe Friday when he attempted to have sex with a girl who had not yet been born. “My desires will at long last be fulfilled when I’m sleeping with a girl so young she can’t even exist in this physical dimension!” the 49-year-old Academy Award winner was overheard saying moments before the collapse of the entire cosmos, when he is believed to have used a particle accelerator to atomize and reconstitute his penis at an infinite number of points throughout the multiverse. “There she is—in the year 2092! She’s younger than anyone I’ve ever seen… Now, to penetrate the quantum singularity!” At press time, sources confirmed the being of pure light that once called itself Leonardo DiCaprio was left disappointed by sex with the yet-to-exist girl whom he still believed was too old.

Jinnistan wrote:

Completely overcast for the new moon eclipse.

Oh well.  We'll always have 2017....
 

Oh, lo!  The clouds did briefly cleave just in time for the sun serpent's tongue.  (Unike 2017, I'm not in the exact path of totality this time).  In a way the extra cloudage did provide a bit of a filter for the smile in the sky, and the light diffusion on the clouds - amber pinks and golden purples....and I think I smelled eggs and cinnamon - was delightful on the cumulus curls.

Now it's supposed to rain until Friday, and I'm going to go kick Margorie Taylor Greene in her new moon kooch.