Oscar Obsolete?

Tonight they will hand out the Oscars and it won’t mean a thing.

A lot of people will watch the Oscar’s on TV, more than will actually go to a movie theater. The show will be longer than many of the movies.

More people play video games than go to movies in a theater. Going to the movies will soon be as rare as going to the opera. Just another expensive antiquated form of mass entertainment.

There will still be movies. You just won’t pay twenty bucks to see a blurry image sitting in uncomfortable seats. You’ll see them they way you see them now, on some device. You probably won’t sit for two hours. Our time is too fragmented now.

It is unlikely they will be on any kind of physical medium. When Sony’s BluRay DVD format won out over Toshiba’s HD-DVD, it seemed irrelevant. I have no intention of replacing all my DVDs with BluRays. If I want a film I will probably download it and review it.

The Oscars made sense when there were few ways to make and distribute films. It made sense when there weren’t millions of people making their own content for everybody else. Sure the quality won’t be as good, but it seems to be good enough. What is the power of these little clips? The barriers of entry are low for the producer and consumer. The stories are shorter and more relevant to their audience. This is something any storyteller should learn.

Watching the Oscars on broadcast television is ironic. You are watching an award show about an obsolete industry on a device that will be obsolete less than a year from now. Even more ironic is watching clips of the Emmys on Youtube.

Copyright 2008 DJ Cline All rights reserved.

Posted by dj in Blumbers, Commentary [632 Views]