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" The entertainment companies are a handful of massive conglomerates that own four of the five music companies that sell 90 percent of the music in the United States. Those same companies also own all the film studios, all the major TV networks, and pretty much all the TV stations in the ten largest markets. They own all or part of every single commercial cable channel. They look at the teen market as part of this massive empire that they're colonizing. [Entertainment companies] are going to take [teen's] over, and their weaponry is films, music, books, CDs, internet access, clothing, amusement parks, sports teams. That's all this weaponry they have to make money off of this market, to colonize this market. And that's exactly how they approach it. So they look at music as just one small part of it. They aren't music companies; they're moneymaking companies, and music is a weapon that generates money for them. "
" . . . I do think it's closely related to politics ultimately, in the broadest sense of the term. I don't think culture on that level operates independent of politics. In fact, I think one of the reasons why the music has been so lame recently in the United States hasn't had anything to do with the music industry or commercialism. It's been a response to the broader demoralization of public life, of civic life, of social life. I think music gets better and culture gets better when people engage socially and politically. The two go hand in hand. . . . the people want controversy in their lives. They want that sense of struggle and conflict. Then you replace it with sort of the Howard Stern-Eminem stuff . . . there's a real need people have that's trying to be met, and the market meets it by giving them a sort of white rage, teen rage groups. . . . It's easy to pick on gay people and minorities and women. . . . If you go out and start picking on the WTO and the people that own the country, now that's another matter. . . . But people want tension. People understand there's something going on in the world--it's not just a "Brady Bunch" world we live in. . . . "
"[re MTV] Viacom is directly an advertising-related company. They've taken American radio and almost single-handed turned it into a 24-hour infomercial on every station. And that's their genius. The head of Viacom and Sumner Redstone are all about maximizing commercial return. . . . They lead the fight in turning every nanosecond of time on their stations into something that's selling something. . . .it's really a 24-hour infomercial. Every second on the air is selling something."
"If you look around the world, it's a global phenomenon. And bluntly, it's all about commercializing the whole teen experience, making youth culture a commercial entity that's packaged and sold to people. So by watching MTV and buying the products there, looking like the people there, buying the music there, you become cool. It's a commercial relationship to coolness, of being acceptable. And if you don't do it, you're a loser. . . . That's the genius of it. . . . it's a self-referential, almost circular thing . . . [MTV] is really ultimately there to serve Sumner Redstone and the owners of that company. It has nothing to do with kids. . . . There's nothing else to it, but it is pure marketing genius. . . . it's all about keeping the cost as low as possible, commercializing it in much as possible, and using market research to sort of make it look as cool as possible. And it has worked."
"now payola's legal again. . . . The money goes to the company that owns [the station]. So if you're a label and you pay enough money to CBS or Viacom to get your music on their stations, you could actually buy your way on. . . . So that integrity . . . is lost. . . . that [quality] filter, that editorial judgment, the idea that there's someone listening to the music who really knows music and cares about it is making a decision this is something that the audience might like--it's been corrupted. It's been turned over to the marketing office, and that's means whoever pays the most money can buy the attention of our audience."
"But what MTV is struggling with is what's going on with all our cultural industries. We have fewer and fewer owners, but more and more choices. . . . And the irony is that, with all this choice . . . in our commercial media system, with all these new options which theoretically increases the quality because there'll be all these smaller markets that can be tended to, in some ways what it's doing, though, is increasing the commercial logic and commercial pressure. Because they've got to get you so badly that they have to use tried and true methods that diminish, in some ways, the chances of creativity. Your margin of error is so slim that you can't take chances. . . . there are only five companies that sell 90 percent of the music in the United States and 80 percent of the music worldwide."
" . . . There's the argument that these companies do market research, so they must be giving the people what they want, because obviously they're studying what people want . . . What they're trying to do is find out how they can make the most money off of people. So they're going to query them, to see what the areas of entry are. It's not an honest examination of what people really want."
"since about 1994 or 1995, has been an unprecedented concentration of ownership. So we have seven or eight companies now, which own these largest media companies. . . . The amount of advertising on American radio today is 18 minutes per hour. It's something like 50 percent more than the early 1990s, because these companies don't have to worry about competition. Two or three of them own all the stations. . . . The only time there isn't advertising, they're selling payola. . . . And it's done not because these are bad people. . . . It's done because this is what the system is set up to produce. . . . If you don't do it, you can't compete. . . . So it's really a systematic issue. It's not of the morality of individuals."
"Q: what are the first steps towards eradicating that? A: . . . Ultimately, I think we have to change the nature of the system. . . . this is public property. . . . So the public has a right to intervene there and say, 'These are the terms we want.' . . . Ultimately, we have to . . . think big and really get to the root of the problem. Just eliminate this hyper-commercialism aimed at children, at teenagers. . . . media literacy in schools can be so important--to make kids aware at a very early age that it isn't natural, that it wasn't always like this. "Think of it critically. Someone's doing it because they benefit by it. This is why. This is what they're trying to do to you." So you can arm yourself and understand the nature of the relationship early on, and be a critical participant in society, and not just someone who's manipulated by marketers." ... [more]
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