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Awards Shows are Increasingly Out of Touch with Mainstream Audiences, Opines Prof. Jeff McCall '76

Awards Shows are Increasingly Out of Touch with Mainstream Audiences, Opines Prof. Jeff McCall '76

September 22, 2018

The all-time low television ratings drawn by Sunday's Emmy Awards, and the declining audiences other awards programs have seen, have the attention of Jeffrey M. McCall, professor of communication at DePauw University.  In a column for The Hill he writes, "These awards shows have become over-the-top, self-congratulatory binges of the entertainment elite celebrating each other. Many average Americans apparently have a hard time viewing these extravaganzas and figuring out how they fit in. The entertainment establishment is, indeed, now an establishment of sorts, and it is detached from the rest of the country. That always has been true, to some extent, but it is increasingly more obvious now as entertainers posture on various causes and political high-horses."

According to the professor, who is a former reporter and political consultant, "Average consumers of mediated content want most to be entertained and/or distracted through television or film. Viewers like popular actors for their acting abilities and characterizations.  Viewers like certain television programs or movies for the exciting drama or comedy. Heavy-handed ideological lecturing under the guise of an awards show just sends viewers away. Hollywood has seriously miscalculated that fans of certain performers or shows care even a smidgen about those celebrities’ cultural or political issues."

McCall observes, "Audiences used to look forward to awards shows to share the joy of common media experiences, but audiences are now so fragmented into niche programming that there is little shared media culture. The influence of the major broadcast networks has declined as subscription services such as HBO, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video gain popularity. Award-winning shows featured on Netflix or HBO aren’t even accessible to half of the nation’s population."

He concludes, "The glory days of television and film are disappearing, along with the awards shows that celebrated such content. The entertainment world, no longer a source of common cultural experience, instead bogs the nation down with a mediated chaos in which high-profile performers delight. For many regular viewers, however, it just isn’t worth an evening in front of a screen to watch a Robert De Niro blurt out vulgar insults at a sitting president. Those departing viewers are being underserved by a media industry that has chosen to disrupt rather than to unite American culture."

You'll find the complete essay at the newspaper's website.

A 1976 graduate of DePauw and a former journalist, Jeffrey M. McCall returned to the University in 1985 as a faculty member.  He is the author of Viewer Discretion Advised: Taking Control of Mass Media Influences and is regularly quoted in stories on media matters.  Earlier this week he discussed the sale of TIME magazine with Fox News.

Source: The Hill

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