What happened to mass culture? It seems to have died without anyone
even noticing. You will no doubt remember when there were songs,
television shows, movies and books that most everyone had heard of.
These shared cultural reference points helped us communicate by doing
things like citing an incident from Seinfeld to illustrate a point. Or
Shakespeare, if you are more cultured.

Well, that’s disappearing fast and we’re all the poorer for it. I
blame changes in technology, the stunning lack of talent of so many of
today’s "artists" and cultural industries that have forgotten how to
connect with customers.

Let’s start with the lack of talent. The
top selling album in the U.S. last year was Josh Groban’s Christmas CD.
No. 2 was the soundtrack from High School Musical 2, followed by the
Eagles album that was released through Wal-Mart. Rock poseur Chris
Daughtry and Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus were close behind. Only
Groban’s album exceeded three million in sales.

In Canada in December, the top-selling album was Mariah Carey’s
latest, which sold 300,000. Superstar Céline Dion hit the one-million
mark earlier in the year, but that’s still less than three per cent of
the population.

The low numbers are not because of downloads,
either. Not legal ones, anyway. It only takes 40,000 downloads for an
album to be certified platinum. Few are. The numbers in the recording
industry are grim. The Canadian Recording Industry Association says
that CD sales were down 17 per cent from the previous year and paid
Internet downloads continue to be pretty insignificant.

The music
industry has become obsessed with people stealing their products
electronically, but the real problem is a lack of compelling talent. We
lack major figures such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and the
Beatles. Each redefined pop music and drew vast audiences that crossed
generations. Literally no one is doing that now. Few new singers today
even have a hope of cracking music’s second tier.

Television was
the other medium that touched everyone, but that has changed. The
curious thing about the recently resolved writers’ strike is how little
people talked about it. The sporadic availability of our favourite
television didn’t seem to bother people.

We are still watching
TV, although audience numbers are down. A year ago, none of the top 30
shows on Canadian television had fewer than one million viewers. This
year eight fall below that mark. The prime-time fare has been so slim
that an afternoon soap opera has crept into 25th place.

In the
most recent BBM Nielsen ratings, the top regular show in Canada was
American Idol, with 2.8 million viewers. The only other show to break
the two-million mark was House. It happens to be a personal favourite,
but when I mention the show to other people, most have no idea what I’m
talking about. Not surprising when one considers that fewer than 10 per
cent of Canadians watch.

The idea that everyone used to watch
certain popular shows wasn’t just an illusion. Back in the 1950s, half
the people in America watched Gunsmoke. Even as recently as a decade
ago, one quarter of them were watching Seinfeld.

In television, the wide proliferation of channels has turned
broadcasting into narrowcasting. With so much choice, the market is
fragmented. That doesn’t mean the shows are all bad, but they all face
such competition that few garner numerically significant audiences.

While
the television communications channels have opened up and dispersed the
audience, radio has gone in the opposite direction. Sure, there are
lots of radio stations but many of them endlessly repeat the music of
the past. The only musical genre with any real vitality is country and
that’s partly because country acts can still reach an audience through
radio.

Books and movies aren’t having much success in finding
mass audiences, either. What few blockbuster movies there have been in
recent years, the ones it seems everyone has seen, are filmed versions
of the Harry Potter books or the Lord of the Rings. Sales of books are
so embarrassingly small that the publishing industry rarely ever talks
about them. A book that sells 5,000 copies is considered a bestseller
in Canada. At that kind of number, there is a pretty fine line between
a bestseller and a secret. The Da Vinci Code is the great exception.
Say no more.

Mass culture has provided the common vocabulary that helps us
understand the world around us. How often have you explained how life
works by citing a sketch from Monty Python? Sadly, mass culture has
become a dead parrot, if you know what I mean, even if the cultural
shopkeepers are still in denial.

Via Canada.com