Broadbased mass media belongs to another age.

That’s the easy and, I’d argue, defeatist answer. Sharing certain national experiences – whether it be election night, a rugby game or a Telethon – has all sorts of benefits: personal, societal and political.

Certainly the proliferation of media channels is going to make those occasions less frequent but broadbased mass media could have a role to play if it stopped endlessly chasing the lowest common denominator down a rabbit hole.

I’d still argue that if someone created a TV show that combined intelligent discussion of topical issues with humour, injected a bit of controversy (not manufactured it as TV often tried to do by saying something lame, but had the kind of heated but polite debates that occur on the better blogs) and gave it a reasonable budget and a good time slot then a mass audience would still watch. What I’d call the “Clive James Show” approach… using satire and mockery to slip in a bit of intelligent debate and commentary here and there.

I don’t know what sort of audience Media 7 is getting, but it’s an example of the sort of thing I mean, as was, in a different way, Eating Media Lunch. But they have time slot and/or channel working against them.

In Australia Channel 10 is about to try “The 7pm Project”, subtitled “News, but not as you know it”. Points to them for bravery, but considering it’s the brainchild of Rove McManus and he’s stacked it with his mates rather than looking for people capable of being incisive (one host is fresh off “Australian Idol” for goodness sake) I’m willing to predict I won’t be resorting to “cutting edge” or “satire” to describe it.

P.S. Yay I have edit back… but it never seems to expire?! Of course you can trust us registrants not to redact the parts of our opinion later proven to be fallacious

Look, the guy had just sold out the O2 arena fifty times over, and had the biggest selling album of all time.

When Elvis died it was big news. When Muhammad Ali dies, expect the coverage to dwarf the Jackson coverage.

Newsflash: Most people still watch TV, and still get their news from TV. (Unless you’re a teenager, then you watch C4).

Political blogs are for political junkies. No-one should kid themselves that political blogs have an influence on the elusive undecideds or swing voters. It’s just bollocks.

Like it or not, a Duncan Garner or a Guyon Espiner have far more influence on the political perceptions of the masses than a Farrar, an Eddie or any other political blogger.

This blog is one I use to find out what is actually going on. Thanks.

Note … awhile back I re-organised my room and cannot get TV1 properly, wall in way of positioning aerial etc.

The untimely death of the biggest pop culture figures has always been massive news. Think Elvis, Lennon, Monroe and Diana. Jackson’s death ranks among them, because his influence on pop culture worldwide has been equally as profound.

So yes, I think your friend is right to question whether they are out of touch.

I can understand dislike of this story taking up a good portion of the 6pm news but why the ire over the one hour special? It was hardly taking up time typically devoted to hard news.

The Economist is indeed doing well: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/news-magazines, though not so much Newsweek and Time and the like.

—

Loving the easier to read spam protection thingy.

I totally understand where you are coming from and to a degree agree with your general argument. We far to often have a media obsessed with celebrity culture.But I don’t think that is the case here and I think you are being far to subjective here.

In terms of popular modern culture I cannot think of anything or anyone bigger than Michael Jackson. Just look at the records he sold. Whether you like him or not you cannot deny he had a huge effect on peoples lives through his music. One million ordinary people travelling to LA for his funeral is evidence of this.

Michael Jackson will be in the history books forever in the same part of the library as The Beatles, Mozart and Shakespare.

In my opinion there has been no news story of any kind in the past 10 days that comes close to being as big as Jackson’s death.

As I said, I know why you disagree with this, but I do not find it strange at all that this is considered news.