I wish I could somehow shake off the degree of frustration and hopelessness that I’ve been feeling since the events of Tuesday night. But my reasons may just be a tad different than the ones that I literally can’t get out of the way of seeing over and over again elsewhere.
I continue to see folks replacing their social media photos and avatars with dark black circles. I continue to see people I cherish posting terse statements about how they are at bare minimum “taking a break from the Internet”, if not outright suspending their feeds. I continue to get looped into chains of folks who are providing lists of companies to boycott, rallying their “troops” with the message “if the only thing that seems to matter is money, let’s not give ‘them’ ours”.
To those who believe they are on to something, allow me to offer this history lesson from my own experience:
During my early days at FOX, I was on an internal committee that was looking for strategies on how to deal with a particularly noisy advocate named Terry Rakolta. Long before social media allowed this practice to amplify and democratize, this well-heeled woman was doing her best to disrupt my life and those of my colleagues. Her Wikipedia entry entry should describe both her mindset and her entitlement:
Rakolta is a resident of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She is married to John Rakolta, the former CEO of Walbridge, and the General Consul for Romania‘s Honorary General Consulate in Detroit, who served as Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates during the Trump administration.[2]
Rakolta’s sister, Ronna Romney, is a Republican political activist and radio talk show host who was formerly married to Scott Romney, the son of former Michigan governor George Romney and brother of former Massachusetts governor and current Senator Mitt Romney. Rakolta’s husband was a national chairman for Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign. Rakolta is a Mormon.
Rakolta was prompted to write to the sponsors of Married… with Children after her children watched the episode “Her Cups Runneth Over” on January 15, 1989, in which Al Bundy and his friend Steve purchase a bra for Al’s wife, Peggy. That same episode had also showed Al ogling at a naked model in a department store, but with her back facing the camera. Several sponsors decided to cancel their commercials in response. Rakolta made several appearances on television talk shows and news programs at the time, including Nightline.
Included on our team was a veteran broadcast standards and practices executive who had decades of experience going back to a time when Jack Paar chose to temporarily resign from his TONIGHT SHOW hosting after complaints were raised about his reference to a “water closet” in a joke he told on his late-night show. He related that story frequently and assured us that we while it would not be in our best interest to dismiss her publicly, we should stand our ground as long as we knew the public at large was on our side and we had the data to back it up.
FOX did consent to move MWC’s time slot up a half-hour from 8:30 PM to 9 PM in a manner akin to how CBS eventually relocated ALL IN THE FAMILY from 8 pm in its era. I wish I could say the motivation was driven by Rakolta’s actions, but the truth was there were higher HUT levels at 9 and overall competition was weaker. And as Wikipedia recaps, our data-driven reaction proved to be the right one:
While the boycott may briefly have affected the content of Married… with Children, it did little to no economic damage. A year after the boycott, nearly all the defecting advertisers had returned, and ratings improved.
Improved would be an understatement. More often than not, the highest-rated FOX affiliate in the country was WKBD in Detroit, Rakolta’s home market.
So if something this well-organized, funded and orchestrated person did didn’t impact us cold-hearted business people, I am anything but confident that any Facebook group urging folks to find more politically sensitive places to spend their fast-food money somewhere else than Chick Fil-A is going to make any dent of consequence.
And it’s also why I am for a change taking to heart the thoughts and insights being expressed by a couple of normally snarky and dismissive journalists who have been reacting to both to the events of Tuesday and the subsequent impact it seems to have had on Wall Street, particularly in the media sector. PUCK’s Matthew Belloni spelled it out succinctly in the lead-up to his WHAT I’M HEARING newsletter drop late last night:
Unlike in Trump’s first term, when entertainment became ground zero for the #Resistance, it feels like the industry—at least the business side of it—is gonna try to make nice to avoid issues with M&A and regulation, which is both sad and a reality of doing business when the president has become so openly vindictive, transactional, and unchecked.
And earlier in the day, THE ANKLER’s Richard Rushfield offered a couple of sobering reality checks of his own. For one, he offered the comparison to the decisions of Tuesday to the decisions that folks have been making with creative content for a lot longer:
The divide between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s respective vernaculars — and that of their parties — could not be more stark. One is polished, conciliatory, strives to square circles and find the precise combination of words that will make differences vanish. At its best, it is effective and lawyerly; at its worst, the attempt to explain things away can string it out to meaninglessness.
The other is bombastic, seeks to heighten tensions, is imprecise beyond the point of parody and is both crude and delights in cruelty. But all of those flaws bolster the sense that this language is something more authentic, less programmed. Its very self-destructiveness is proof of its authenticity. Its ugliness makes it real.
This week, it was clear which tongue much of America finds more convincing.
This linguistic divide is at the heart of much of the troubles we grapple with. It doesn’t manifest itself every day in every way; people still show up for big fancy movies and watch mega-budget TV spectacles.
But more and more, these productions and their marketing are swimming in a pool that speaks with a different tongue. We are talking to people with a Marvel Cinematic Universe voice while we were living in a YouTube world.
And again, data backs it up. YouTube continued to be the most popular streaming destination in September per Nielsen’s incomplete Gauge report, scoring the only recorded double-digit share of viewing even at a time when its competitors at Prime Video were scoring gains. And don’t just think this YouTube adoption is being driven by young folks; on Tuesday night, collective viewing of Election Night coverage on traditional news networks was markedly down at a time when YouTube had something else to crow about, as THE WRAP’s Sean Burch disclosed yesterday:
Nearly 84 million hours of live election content was streamed on Tuesday, according to Streamcharts… And YouTube accounted for the vast majority of those hours, with 80.6%, or 60.7 million hours, of those hours being watched on the Google-owned streaming platform. (The U.S. accounted for most [72.3%] of those 84 million hours streamed overall.).
Those stats stand out when considering viewership on traditional channels took a big hit this year. Nielsen reported 42.3 million people watched Donald Trump v. Kamala Harris coverage across 18 networks during prime time on Tuesday — down 25% from last election, when 56.9 million people watched election coverage during that time.
Given those stats, it might then be somewhat easier to comprehend Rushfield’s other contention from yesterday which may be why Hollywood is a tad less distressed than so many of those that follow me on social media are expressing:
There is very good reason to fear that the long-awaited great wave of consolidation will now kick off. Let’s look at the ingredients:
- Studios that fall dangerously close to “distressed asset” category
- That big picture have no way other way apart from mergers to deal with the looming hole wrought by the collapse of the cable bundle
- The largest companies in the world have more or less sat out M&A activity for the last four, even eight years, when government scrutiny has been relatively active, and are thus overflowing with cash.
- These very companies have been perched on our doorstep with a foot in our industry for these same years. These include:
- Apple, No. 2 most valuable company. Cash on hand: $140.8 billion
- Amazon (No. 4). Cash on hand: $88.05 billion
- Alphabet (No. 5): Cash on hand: $93.2 billion
- While we’re at it: Meta (No. 7). Cash on hand: $70.9 billion.
Whatever regulatory pressure there was, it will now largely disappear, as long as they stay on someone’s good side . . .
- To repeat, my long-standing predictions: Comcast buys Warner Disco. Apple buys Disney. And I’ll throw in: Amazon buys Sony.
Given that our country will again be run a one-time “game show host”, it’s almost apropos that the ultimate game of LET’S MAKE A DEAL may be how 2025 unfolds. And given how good a job these companies are doing in comparison to YouTube, yet again, the data would seem to back up Rushfield’s arguably dark but insightful take.
Take a good look at the numbers above. Does anyone REALLY think that boycotting the Washington Post, let alone a fast-food restaurant, will mean a darn thing?
If you do, I suggest you look up what Terry Rakolta is doing these days. Or what she might be watching, eating or reading.
Until next time…