Today was the dreaded ladder day. I have been promising to clean out the gutters on the house and adjoining buildings for quite a while. And because there are levels and other levels and other, other levels it took hours. And somehow that damn ladder has gotten heavier over the years. I mean it can’t be me. I’m as strong, skillful, handsome and intelligent as ever. I think it may be that the Earth’s gravitational field has increased over time. If I’m ballparking it, I’d say it’s doubled. For that reason, I found it necessary to use “maximum effort.” But it didn’t help that it was in the high eighties today and high humidity. And if I’ve learned one lesson it’s that badminton birds are very effective at plugging downspouts. From now on badminton is a forbidden sport. Let’s see them get a basketball stuck up there! Well, that’s enough whining. I didn’t manage to break my neck or go into vapor lock so let’s move on.
I saw that the same company that wasn’t willing to pay $46 million dollars in losses a year for the Late Show was willing to pay $1.5 billion dollars for five more years of South Park. That’s got to make you pause. I remember back in the 1990s when the pilot for that show came out on-line. It had Jesus fighting with Santa Claus. It looked like it had been drawn by a twelve-year-old and it seemed to have about the same emotional maturity. And now the two doofuses who created it are going to be billionaires. Well, only in America, I guess. And that at least makes sense. People want to watch their product. It makes money. It has value. Stephen Colbert and NPR and PBS can’t get enough people to watch their stuff to pay for making it.
I guess the lesson here is that if you’re an equal opportunity offender (and the makers of South Park are most definitely that) then that doubles your audience and adds a level of authenticity to your story. South Park and its creators; Trey Parker and Matt Stone have insulted and mocked every single powerful figure in one or more episodes over the course of almost thirty years. That’s all presidents, dictators, religious leaders, billionaires, geniuses, generals, movie stars, corporate bigwigs, movie studios, nations, religions, even supernatural beings from Jesus to Satan to Mohammed. They’ve made fun of the woke and MAGA. They offend everyone. And they do it disgustingly. But people will pay to watch their stuff because it’s funny. Disgusting, but funny.
I think that tells me everything I need to know about why the current media landscape is crumbling. The product on display is really bad and almost no one is willing to cough up the ducats to pay for it. And I believe that is a hopeful situation. A lot of really crappy content will go away. And a lot of it is stuff that annoys me; MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC. What’s left afterward will at least be profitable. Stay tuned.