Eric McLuhan's (co-author of The Laws of Media book), rather lofty, academic sentiment regarding the way new mediums hassle each other is perhaps as relevant and as convoluted now, as it ever was:
'A new medium is never an addition to an old one, nor does it leave the old one in peace. It never ceases to oppress the older media until it finds new shapes and positions for them.' (1964)
What McLuhan was driving at four decades ago was the way in which different media outputs tread on each others toes and vie for your attention. Take for instance the hit print journalism has taken in recent years since the advent of Twitter. Why pay good money for a daily paper when you can access all incoming news about your specific areas of interest directly, without the extraneous and cringeworthy dating ads and all instantly at the touch (or swipe) of a button? Web 2.0 is of course the culprit as ever and although existing news outputs are adjusting, the point remains that the times, they are a changin'. But in terms of your entertainment surely the introduction of web streaming services such as Netflix and BBC iPlayer here in the UK are a good thing? Well absolutely, no one can argue that a greater choice about what you watch and when is a win for the consumer. The interesting thing of course, is what it means for showbiz and the entertainment industry. In the same way that VHS and home movie watching scared Hollywood witless in the eighties, these new services are causing shake ups on both the big and small screens. The industry knows that you steal music, they know you spend all day watching cats jumping in and out of cardboard boxes and they know you will do almost anything to get away from spending your hard earned cash. Long gone are the days where there were three channels on TV and you watched whatever was put in front of your face because it was so damn exciting to see the little people dance and in colour too! We are a jaded audience, if we don't like it we switch over, we play Angry Birds, we share memes and we troll on Youtube. In short, it's harder now to get or maintain our attention, let alone our cash. That said, the industry is fighting back. How? It's polarising. Hollywood knows you are going to take its films and watch them from your iPhone, they know it's an effort and a chore for you to get to the cinema and so they're making films that can only be seen on that big screen in a dark room. 3D is hard to pirate and the money-men know that it's not as spectacular on your 42 inch plasma than it is in IMAX.
Movies are dumbing down yes, but they're also becoming more about the spectacle. You know the good guy gets the girl and saves the day but that's not why you're sat there chewing popcorn, it's because the good guy can shoot lasers from his eyes and has 3D high def robot ninja friends from outer space. Youtube can't accommodate that sort of highly rendered flashing visual orgy in the same way that studio system and cinemas can - and that is why they're playing to their strengths. TV is changing for the same reasons but not in the same way. Take HBO's recent foray into the fantasy epic '
A Game of Thrones'. Arguably it has the production value of any small feature film every episode but whats interesting about it is that most of it just people talking. Did you notice that? As awe inspiring and refreshing as shows like 'A Game of Thrones', 'Mad Men' or 'Luther' here from Blighty are, they're a lot more cerebral than perhaps we realise. What the small screen has going for it is that although you may be watching an episode online, catching up through your XBOX 360 etc. you come back time and time again, series after series. This is not because of the spectacle but the characters, the slow burning stories, the character in the basement they've kept locked up for half a season. TV execs know they can pull a series if it loses viewership so it's not as financially risky to commit to a new idea or intellectual property in the same way it is in Hollywood. Moreover they know how to drag out a story (See
Lost) and perhaps most importantly of all, they know you can now get the same stunning visual experience in your living room as you could ten years ago at a cinema. So what they're doing now is playing to the little box's strengths. For TV it's story telling, it's the ability to tell richer stories with greater depth than a feature film can squeeze into 90 minutes. Our TV dramas and comedies are having to compete with ever cheaper and consumer friendly film making equipment they're fighting against webisodes, vlogs and flash animations. So in return they're giving you experiences you can't get online, solid acting, slowly paced and well spun tales of honour, manhood, family etc. Something LOLcats can hardly claim. All the mediums and industries are adapting to accommodate each other, and although these new changes may be slower here, faster there or maybe just unwelcome in some cases, the thing to remember is this: a more saturated market is good for the consumer. They want your time and money and if they have to work harder, make better programming, tell better stories to get to do it, that's only a good thing.