Video Killed the Radio Star Redux

The year I was born, 1979 a British band by the name of The Buggles release the song they'd become known for and quite frankly nothing summed up the movement better than their 3:21 minute pop tune. Two years later in 1981 when MTV launched it was the first video played on the network and music videos did go on to change the industry as we know it. But the seeds of change were planted long before The Buggles decided that they could make a hit record out of it. As soon as television was available to the masses the change was evident. Advertisers could demonstrate their product to you. People who listened to the debates of Kennedy vs Nixon on the radio thought Nixon won, but the audience who saw the young photogenic Robert F. Kennedy on television told a different story and when the votes were counted the distinguished gentlemen from Massachusetts took the office. Showing images of war on television during Vietnam gave the people at home an entire different understanding of what it's like "over there" and turned the country against its leader and its troupes. Video had indeed killed radio long before a song was created.

The Buggles soothsaying wisdom could never have been more spot on. "In my mind and in my car, we can't rewind we've gone too far." Now that we could see what these people looked like and know that they weren't as attractive, handsome, sexy, or drop dead gorgeous as we thought they were or wanted them to be the industry changed. It found new faces, new body types, and sold you something different. Now you have to look the part, and live the part. And dancing and acting skills are beginning to become a necessity. Video didn't just kill radio, it also made it very difficult for people who despite any setbacks they had were very good at what they did get a job.

The Buggles were also the subject of my Multimedia Production teacher's first lecture he gave my class before we began developing web pages and content. History is doomed to repeat itself, and now that Electronic Gaming Monthly my favorite magazine of my childhood which I grew up with is one day dead, I feel compelled to write this essay, rant, or whatever you want to call it for the internet is the new video and the radio stars of yesteryear are fading.

My blog is mostly focused with games so for purposes of this post I will keep the subject matter there. We are all reporters now. We talk about our lives, our secrets, our fears, our very existence in blogs, Facebook, and Twitter posts. The internet has turned us into a people of opinions, but rarely do we really take the time to compose our thoughts and write them out. Admittedly it can be quite difficult when some random user can post a comment "y don't knoe waat ur sayng n uy bl0g suX0r3s" seemingly undo the hours of thought you've put into critique. Print journalism was always something of an expanded critique where writers really had time to arrange their thoughts in the cleverest manner possible and give their readers their true opinion on something. The reader could take time and follow the thought process and come to an understanding and agree or disagree and make a but make an informed decision. As a kid when a $50 video game was a big deal and I was only able to get so very few every year, I looked to these reviews and thought processes to help me make that decision. Somewhere down the road it all became about the the score.

Some years ago as a college freshman the first thing about journalism I learned was that the media cannot tell you what to think, only what to think about. Now that I've graduated and have been in that world of things, it has become more blatant that the advertisers and the PR firms are trying to control what you are thinking about more than ever especially for the enthusiast press which is what game journalists are. I wish that were the only problem for if it were EGM would likely still be printing issues. Anyone who has ever worked for any media publication knows that the business survives solely on the advertising dollars it can get. Everything from how much staff they can hire, how many pages they can print, and how many articles they can write rests on how many ad pages they can sell. People who read these magazines are enthusiasts themselves and want the information as fast as they can get it. The internet made this so much easier. More people started getting information from the online magazines. More ad dollars were spent on those internet magazines. Less time came between enthusiast and information. Now it's a race to have the information up the fastest. Now there's less time to collect your thoughts. All you can really do is put out a review, and a score.

The problem is advertising really has no effect on the enthusiast reader who goes to these sites and subscribes or reads the magazines. Think about it. Most Xbox 360 owners who read the enthusiast magazine or web page regularly were going to buy Gears of War 2 anyway despite what the review said or what score it got. This is true for several of the AAA titles that come out all year. The review and score at this point in this day and age only serve the purpose of giving the readers something to talk about. As stated in the beginning we all have opinions today and places to post them. Then something changed. Podcasting came along and once again we were privacy to this wonderful process of people putting their thoughts together in these wonderful roundtable discussions of ideas and opinions clashing and you get a sense of what these people actually think about the game. It's like having the magazines of old back again but in audio format and on a more frequent basis. But it is much more difficult to monetize a podcast. You can't stuff it with ads everywhere like the magazines did because the audience will complain. You can't compromise your morals and give extra praise to a game that doesn't deserve it because your fans will think you are being paid off, and it is difficult to get one sponsor to spend enough money for a limited amount of ads per show while running the risk of people talking bad about its product. The only solution that makes any sense that would not compromise your morals and keep a stream of revenue would be to charge for the episodes, but this would likely alienate your base and lead to people pirating your product or outright leaving the community. It seems all roads lead to failure. It's no wonder why Ira Glass, host of This American Life, has been asking for donations for the past month.

The only way to keep the engine running is to support it. In the enthusiast industry where ad dollars are becoming more and more scarce the only those dollars are going to have to come from us. The internet won this war before the trumpets even sounded and we are all better for it. But we must not forget what happened for the "in my mind and in my car" explanation I made several hundred words ago still applies. Advertisers and PR firms have the dollars and they want the good reviews and scores for the games they represent. They could care less about real opinions and they will engineer a Brittany Spears of reviews for every industry. When the dust finally settles it is important to make sure that real writers with real opinions are not casualties.

Note - I need an editor, but I feel it's best to post this as is.

I would just like to say thank you to all those at 1Up and EGM that lost their jobs. You all brought much enjoyment to my life. As a kid I always wanted to get something published in the magazine and now feel much shame that I didn't pursue that chance now that I'll never have it again. I wish you all the best of luck and hope to hear your voices and read your work again soon.