Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Are You Buying What They’re Selling?
In the early days of my television career I worked at a very small independent station and had to learn to do a lot of things. It was a vastly superior education than the one I had received at university. I was fortunate enough to learn from men whose broadcasting credentials reached all the way back into the glory days of network radio. They were both patient and allowed me to make my share of mistakes and learn from them.
One of my first assignments was to write and edit promotional spots. Here my mentor was the corporate programmer and passed on this bit of sage advice. Never assume that the rest of the public shares your interests or tastes and never assume that your successes are an indication that you know what you’re doing. That last bit confused the crap out of me.
He explained, “I’ve been at this for 30 years and sometimes people will watch shows for reasons I never thought of. Sometimes they watch in spite of what I think.”
In 2013 NBC aired a live presentation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music to great ratings success but fundamentally misunderstood the reasons people watched. Instead of seeing it as a combination of bankable star and beloved show, they (and their competitors) just thought it could be replicated by any Broadway show as long as it was presented live. They were wrong.
And so it is with politics. As we run up to 2020 are people buying what the major factions are selling? Are you buying socialism? A return to “normalcy?” A continuation of Trump? Or are you buying something for totally different reasons?
Published in General
Fundamentally, I have a hard time equating politics to a voluntary activity like buying and selling.
Not enough competition.
For too long, politics has been running on the fumes of “I’m buying this because I only have two choices and that product is worse.”
It hasn’t been a true barometer of “consumer” opinion for a while.
Are you asking about “people,” or about our own reasons? I don’t have a good handle on what “people” are thinking because there are a lot of closed mouths around me—thank goodness, I suppose—and I suspect we won’t know what “people” have been thinking until after the election. I plan to vote for Trump for the usual reasons, including the fact that the progs terrify me. I pray that a second term will solidify not just some of his gains but will also set the standard for future conservatives, not in his style, which belongs to him, but in his courage and dogged plain-thinking.
Because we are a center right site, it’s highly doubtful any of us are buying socialism. Most fortunately, we have some very bright minds on Ricochet who have highly developed critical thinking skills. However, I’m not so sure about the average guy on the street since the press gives them few options other than a constant barrage of Trump criticism day after day. I fear the Trump hatred will drive them to a candidate who will do permanent damage to the economic system in this country. We can only hope that enough “normal” people see the injustice of the product they are being sold and grasp the big picture.
I was thinking about this for the last couple of days. I saw some reported polls indicating Millennials approve of or support socialism by percentages as high as 70%. I went to school during a period where we were in a shooting war or a Cold War with countries practicing socialism and then our schools taught that socialism was an unacceptable governing approach that failed its people. What do they teach in our educational system now?
The teach that racism and sexism and colonialism are the driving forces behind inequality and injustice. This is the theme from History to Economics to Chemistry.
Excellent question you ask but there is,I believe, no definite answer just now.
I can see that some are, in fact, already in the purchase phase: Others have made a buy long since. Others are only window shopping. For some it’s like they are in the wrong store and everything they see is repellent to them. Many have not even begun the process, and I imagine these are the ones that will have the final say.
An important point: different people may buy the same product for very different reasons. Indeed, people who are in the same demographic category may buy the product for very different reasons. Clayton Christensen & Michael Raynor discussed this point, with examples, in their book The Innovator’s Solution.
Concerning the current political season: I’m especially buying the preservation of freedom of speech and thought, which is under heavy assault from the Left and the Democratic Party which it now controls.
Also buying the preservation of the American economy and its growth potential from the Dem’s ideas on taxation and especially their insane ideas on energy.
Plus: buying the fixing of the disastrous education system which now exists.
Learning how to do things is vocational training. Education is learning how to think.
George Will once mused to the effect: “The 3 Rs have gone from Readin’, Writin’, and ‘Rithmetic to Racism, Recycling, and Reproduction.”
If the economy and the current foreign policy/military situation remain the same, I would think 2020 would turn into one of those “Who are you going to believe — Me or your lyin’ eyes?” situations, similar to 1984 when the economy was just entering Year 3 of the Reagan boom that essentially lasted from the fall of 1982 to the 9/11 economic downturn.
But then, that’s what I thought in 2012 — that the economy would determine the election’s outcome. I though it would be pretty much a repeat of the 1976-80 period, with Obama in the Jimmy Carter role, and that people would vote him out in favor of Romney for the continued stagnant economy. The difference, I suppose was Carter inherited a stagnant economy from Ford and had made things worse, while the Iranian hostage situation embarrassed American voters. Obama took over four months after the economic collapse caused by the mortgage crisis and finished up the bank bail-out efforts Bush and his team started, so the mindset may have been the Obama economy in 2012 might be dead in the water, but it was better than the status quo four years earlier, and while the Middle East was falling apart, the U.S. didn’t have any huge group being held hostage there (and hopes by 2008 Obama swing voters that their votes be justified by him succeeding may also have created a loyalty that wouldn’t have been there in another president seeking re-election on such a weak resume).
Just looking at the metrics right now, you’d think it would mean Trump gets re-elected in 53 weeks. But as with 2012, there may be some things I’m not seeing, not so much with the hardcore Democrats, but with the swing voters in the key states, that’s going to create a different outcome (possibly that they’re so tired of the Trump drama, they’ve convinced themselves that nothing much would change under a Democratic president other than less drama, even if that meant President Liz or Bernie).
Voting is voluntary, too. So is being an informed citizen. You can go through life happily without doing either one.
But the question is – who is in line with the electorate and who’s selling something no one is really clamoring to buy?
Depends on the electorate. There’s the smart set, which wants broad elaborate gestures towards socialism. Not the actual thing for themselves, but for others. A smaller, younger portion wants all the good things socialism promises: free college, and then a guaranteed cool job from which they cannot be fired, with all the benefits, all paid for by policies that shave the stolen wealth from the wrong people.
They believe themselves to be the majority, and the future.
I have come to doubt, if not wholly disbelieve, pretty much every word uttered by any politician, regardless of party affiliation. Despite their history of spinelessness, I continue to vote “R” because they at least pretend to believe in certain conservative principles.
Oddly enough, for all his bluster and boorishness, Donald Trump has actually delivered on more campaign promises than any of his recent predecessors. I may be more inclined to believe him now than when I reluctantly voted for him in 2016. It would be the ultimate irony if the most authentically conservative politician (in policy terms) of our day turns out to be a foul-mouthed, womanizing, former Democrat.
On a side note to EJ’s post: Isn’t is a great thing to have experienced hands guiding the beginning of one’s career? I was fortunate in that way, as well – though in a line of work that is far less structured than operating a TV station.
I think that there is a very large group of Americans who are not on board with what the media is selling.
They are losing readership and viewership. The landscape is fragmenting and they no longer have such a dominant hold on people’s perspectives.
The media are boxed in, the walls are closing in ( as they like to say). They are addicted to their viewers who are themselves addicted to the daily soap operas they manufacture. The more they chase this tail, the more obvious it is to ordinary people they are agenda-driven fiction and propaganda.
The WaPo headline about that, um, religious scholar, and the reaction is the latest disconnect.
Like ad agencies that win Clio’s ….. but the ads didn’t actually result in sales for the client.
The thing is, if it’s Washington, it’s too narrow, too disconnected, and by definition top down, so it has to make it up and push it down. One makes it up based on numbers–what story carries further, has more support etc. If the story teller remains Washington there is no solution to this math, indeed it only gets worse. It didn’t used to be that way. Washington had its role and it was wide and suffered many of the same problems because foreign and defense policy were national as was international trade. So we had to struggle with issues we couldn’t understand. They were too broad, too many players, too many interests so we had to keep it simple and fundamental and we did pretty well. Now everything is like that we have to guess and keep it simple, but can’t because the issues aren’t foreign and Defense policy or international trade rules, they’re everything. It can’t work, that’s why centralized countries always screw up and go down hill unless they’re small enough to fix themselves like Sweden, but we can’t. We have to return power to the states as the constitution demands and it’ll be painful and disconnected for quite a while, but we have no choice. Washington can’t.
“Smart set” is probably not the name for these people, though “majority” and “future” might be.
I am remarkably gullible. But somebody has to keep the click-bait lobby going.
They’re the future unemployed.
No indeed. Which is why when pundits & pols start talking about “mandates” I wanna smack ’em.
Voting is voluntary. Politics is not. Voting is choosing who is going to rule over you. The question of whether anybody should rule over you has already been decided.
Fear is always a powerful motivator. In Trump we have a known: A petulant jerk who has fostered a strong economy with low unemployment and higher growth and none of the bad stuff people were dreaming would happen like gays in concentration camps or nuclear war with the Norks. In the Democrats we have the prospect of very risky policies. Even the most moderate among them wants to do crazy stuff like stopping all fossil fuel consumption. The fear of risk will probably win out.
This resonates, as my dad was one of those men (an early TV time salesman.) I learned plenty about TV from him and his friends. And they listened to little me, because as you say, in TV and advertising you always want to know about the audience segments you may not understand from first hand experience.
My grandfather thought it was pretty risky of my dad to “sell time” for his livelihood. At least radio was established, but TV? Yet, by the 1950’s, my dad and his Mad Men-era friends showed professional interest in my viewing habits. A bunch of us kids got invited to watch Popeye cartoons in a sort of wee focus group. Earlier, I got quoted approvingly in one of the trades for my comment that the best part of boring educational show Ding Dong School was the commercials. [Political lesson: embrace the age of media!]
In the 1970’s I was deeply enmeshed in audience research at an ad agency. Digging through the pocketpieces, the thick orange Nielsen books, and the fascinating yellow ones, and charting out the overnights, the demographics of our nation became clearer. By the early 1980’s I’d relocated to L.A., closer to the shows, but surprised and dismayed to see a producer storm out of a focus group because the viewers were saying things she didn’t want to hear. [Political lesson: always listen to the audience.]
In the early 1980’s it was fun to see NBC’s smart line-up suddenly popping with my own (25-34) demographic. TV’s second Golden Age begins! Still, there were audiences less enamored of Emmy-winner Hill Street Blues as of the soap opera Knot’s Landing. Others turned up en masse for Married With Children, a sharp retort to the sophisticated optimism of The Cosby Show and Family Ties. [Lesson for politics: don’t be a lifestyle snob.]
Do highly educated Ricochetti enjoy the brilliant use of language on Frasier? Still, Tim Allen’s Home Improvement beat it in the ratings. [Lesson for politics: bigger words, fewer votes.]
Over the next 30 years the broad niches shrunk, with only a few left standing. America’s Funniest (Home) Videos, the 1989 forerunner of YouTube, survives. [Political lesson: populism is powerful stuff.]
So also stands 1989’s The Simpsons, the universal family program of our time. In TV terms, the lesson might be that the funniest people no longer come out of the Catskills, but from The Harvard Lampoon. The wider lesson is that the family persists as a central unit, but due to popular demand, the authoritative Dad of the 1950’s has been replaced by a dunce. Now don’t read too much into that. A duncely Dad is simply more identifiable. Kids think they’re smarter than dad. Current wives know so. And for the late 20th century’s fastest-growing demographic, former wives, Homer reminds them of their ex’s. Translation for politics: run more women for office, but give them better hair stylists than Marge Simpson.
I view the media (and political) choices of today’s younger audience members with some of the same mystery, concern, and annoyance that my grandfather had for a changing world, and my parents had for boomers. As a comfort, a few more lessons learned:
Great stuff.
I presume you include the news media here. But why does it work that way? And when did it start working that way?
The day Fox News Channel turned a profit.
Roger Ailes was a genius. Tasked by Rupert Murdoch to launch a successful effort to challenge CNN, Ailes took part of the money to pay cable and satellite distributors to carry FNC. That was the opposite of what everyone else was doing. The model reversed itself when Fox News became popular. (Now they get an average of $1.65 per month from every one of the 87M service subscribers. That’s 140M per month or $1.6B per year before advertising sales.)
FNC’s success showed that you didn’t have to walk the middle line to make loads of money.
Now with the Internet, things are chopped up even more. Cord cutting is accelerating but not yet critical. Total households are down from 101M just a few short years ago. Enter over-the-top services such as Netflix and then you’re cutting out the middleman. What remains to be seen is if such direct-to-consumer offerings can actually turn a profit without the subsidies that come with cable bundling. Netflix, for all the hype, is $12.4B in debt. They are about to lose access to Disney and Fox Studio products and Comcast has announced a service for NBCUniversal to debut in 2020. How many stand alone services can thrive is yet to be determined.
Oh, dear. I hope you have a Jeeves to extract you from the soup.
I think the election is a different story. Trump of all people is going to be the policy hawk pushing against socialism, Democrats are going to be the ones pushing mood.
All of this chaos goes away if you don’t re-elect the bad man
Plus, we’ll help you. We’ll make you more middle class by alleviating your costs.
What I am buying is a lot of ammo and dry goods.
No I am not.
Here is what I am NOT buying: the world is coming to an end and we are right at the precipice of everything going the way of name your favorite post apocalyptic story. Everything we have come to know and love about society is being torn down.
I’m not buying that. And both the left and the right love to sell it.