In my frequent visits with my mother, I was mystified by a "personality" on the CBS news affiliate.
The personality was of indeterminate gender. Maybe he-was-turning-to-she or vice versa. Maybe the personality was one of the other 164 genders.
I found it odd that they were inflicting white-bread, middle-America with this experiment.
GHA
I know many of you are thinking, "It is the G-H-A. They are trying to normalize deviancy"
Maybe.
But an answer that I find more satisfying is the likelihood that Corporate media is preparing their consumers for "Doug TV".
Automated radio programming
Most of us came of age when real, live DJs queued up the music, filled dead time with chatter and educated us about music. Personalities were important because there was not that much music to differentiate.
Then somebody realized that digital music is a snap to automate. It was as simple as having a character-voice record a bunch of throw-away lines "Write that number in the dust on your dash" and randomly shuffle music and ads and color-comments.
Radio personalities, office staff and others were pink-slipped. The payroll at radio stations plummeted. Owners made bank.
Listeners quickly adapted. More music and less dead-time was good. Hearing the intro and ending of music was better than listening to the DJ talk over it.
Michael Thomas is a stepping-stone to Max Headroom. Good-bye Kira Lake, Jim Geyer, Jorma Duran, Chivon Kloeper and the rest. You will replaced with a synthetic, composite cartoon and you never saw it coming. Ditto for Nora O'Donnell. You priced your self out of a job.
I understand greed better than I understand perverts and I don't think corporate media types are primarily motivated by ideals.
Automation is changing many things… sigh
ReplyDeleteThat's my job...
DeleteMax Headroom,
ReplyDeleteNow that is a memory.
Also about the time I got rid of television.
ERJ, having read your musings for several years now, I can’t recall disagreeing with you twice in a span of just a few days. I really think the meds are putting you in a haze. First, we have you thinking our broken justice system is working within intended parameters. Now here you are thinking that corporate media is somehow making a profit play by using androgynous Pat as clown for some of their hits. No, they aren’t. They are, and have been for decades, trying to steer culture by normalizing the deviant. Whether it’s the hilarious homosexual in everybody’s favorite sitcom or the gay couple in the drama that are such good parents, while the heterosexual couple abuses their kid, corporate shoves this crap down our throats incessantly, until it seems perfectly acceptable to the sheeple audience. From seeing a gay couple kissing on a magazine cover to a sexless eunuch on local news, our kids see it over and over until it’s imprinted in their heads full of mush. Politics is downstream of culture, to quote the great Breitbart, and they very happily eschew some pennies on the margin to create a culture that supports their deviant politics. And feel better! The sooner you emerge from your happy med induced haze, the better! You’re needed out there…
ReplyDeleteIt is good to disagree. That shows that we are thinking men and not NPCs.
DeleteI cannot imagine the shareholders (Chinese?) walking away from a pile of gold coins on the floor. I believe the automated radio transition resulted in more than 75% of personnel being purged.
The other thing about Max Headroom is that he is 100% reliable. He doesn't tell stories at parties. He works 24 hours a day.
You made way too much outta some gay dude on TV. But yeah they are trying to normalize it.
ReplyDeleteDuring the 2nd hour of Good Morning America, there is often an individual whose lifestyle appears to be an 'alternative to mainstream culture' that does the show business segment. Not a problem with me, somebody has to do the job. I agree with Anon 7:43 above that too many TV programs (and FAR TOO MANY COMMERCIALS) have these lifestyles portrayed to be more common then they are now. Put on a pedestal in a spotlight.
ReplyDeleteWho even watches CBS anymore? My understanding is that the most watched network shows draw less than 1% of the US and the average show much less, well under a million viewers.
ReplyDeleteBig media has been pushing deviancy for decades. My wife has been bingeing on 'The Love Boat' that was her favorite as a kid. Gay, pedo, 'trans' (Gopher's college roommate shows up as a surgically-altered 'woman') episodes are constant. They try to make it appear this crap is normal, and you're the deviant for noticing.
ReplyDeleteI can ditto the money saving aspect of the lack of DJ's. When I was a broadcast engineer, you had meters to read and EBS was a switch on the board. Now, it's all automated. And if there really is a DJ, they show up, record their little spiels, drag and drop them in the music list, save to disk and leave. They get paid for the hour they were there, not the 4 hours you think they are.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing warmer to my heart than someone spinning vinyl, getting the carts prepared, patching in the satellite to the last pot on the board.... The smell of warm wiring and tubes in the Ampex 351s.....cueing up reel to reels in the yellow glow of the meters... The jump of the db meters on the LPB, the sweep of your hand as you roll the pot up, snick on the switch as you go by and speak into the mic, "Good morning! You are tuned to KHCB FM, 105.7, Keeping Him Close By since 1962. It's 6AM and time for...."
Hey you could be banished to the 7th level of hell and made to watch The View.
ReplyDeletePre programed radio is nothing new. The song list is provided to the station depending on the demographics of its listeners. I have had to listen to the Bay City Rollers every DJ shift change for the last 3 days. The Horror!
"WASU-340 watts that sounds like a lightbulb!" Boy, but we got in trouble at the university radio station for using that tagline. And for format busting-that one eventually cost me my slot. Worth it, though. Disco S****!
ReplyDeleteOur local AM radio station has been nothing but an automated empty building for some time now, but at least they allowed it the questionable dignity of having it's old facade out front. I happened to ride by there yesterday-even that is now gone. I expect the building will be some BS "sweepstakes" gambling parlor Real Soon Now. My old tube Zeniths have nothing much to play these days.
We're all dinosaurs, wondering what that big fiery light in the sky was....