I blame executives for failing to find it, nurture it, break it and maximise it.
And actually I blame MY generation for failing to breed and teach a new generation of executives.

A mere 110 people have bothered to look at this thread today; compared to thousands on other threads. Clearly music is of little interest to Internet visitors these days.

If it generally has low views could it be because the title doesn't tell you what it is? Other music forums are busy.

JK2006 wrote:
I blame executives for failing to find it, nurture it, break it and maximise it.
And actually I blame MY generation for failing to breed and teach a new generation of executives.

I said this would happen.

When every teenager can run a "record label" from his bedroom - all tracks uploaded to a site which no one will ever access or browse - with no marketing, promotion, (gimmicks?) etc ... you are better off just burying the track in your garden.

Promotion has died on the vine. There's a HUGE potential audience out there among the 40s and 50s who just aren't reached any more. Idiots like Trevor Dann bombed them out of Radio One, Radio 2 plays them mainly what they've already heard (or what sounds like things they've already heard), so they no longer bother with the charts and the only marketing that gets directed at them is about nostalgic acts. They're the children of mass entertainment who are now treated as an exotic and 'elderly' niche, and they don't respond to that. When they do catch something - largely by accident - such as docs on BBC4, the sales go through the roof, so it's not as if the enthusiasm for music has gone. They need new music shows - Bill Cotton gave people like David Gates their own early evening BBC series, that's the kind of positivity that's needed - and playlists that wake them up and make them feel like they're not ostracised from contemporary music. And loads of people who have the ability and propensity to write mass appeal music have zero incentive to do so - the old ones just tour instead and the young ones go in a different direction. It's depressing.

Yes media - radio, TV, press - was largely to blame but it hasn't really changed since the gloriously inventive Pirate Radio days.
Executives though have lost the ability to reach the masses. It should be their responsibility to find ways to reach them; even though those ways have changed radically.

One of the reasons why I linked up with Charlie, Alex and Tommy in the early You Tube days.

Lol is correct. Agnetha up to No.4 because of that rather good BBC documentary last Tuesday. I suspect a lot of people didn't even know she had a new album out.

I am generally very interested in new music, but since the introduction of the endless adverts on most videos I only look if there is a special reason to, because I am far too impatient and there is no point in deliberately seeking to be irritated.
I dont think it is just me, because I am hearing all the time how people have been put off using youtube.

JK2006 wrote:

Executives though have lost the ability to reach the masses.

Probably alot easier in the days when there were only 4 records labels - and only 2 TV channel !

Everything is dilated these days - no prog gets the audience it once would have reached.

Oh my music series would ITK: remember No Limits, almost 6 million a week and No1 show on BBC2.

It just has to be good. If you build it, they will come...

In The Know wrote:
JK2006 wrote:

Executives though have lost the ability to reach the masses.

Probably alot easier in the days when there were only 4 records labels - and only 2 TV channel !

Everything is dilated these days - no prog gets the audience it once would have reached.

I agree that it's not as easy as it was, but must politely disagree that it's THAT different. Take a listen to, say, any comedy gig on TV - their frame of reference assumes that everyone watches X Factor and BGT, has seen and/or read Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, has a smart phone and uses twitter (I'm none of the above!). The myth of the acutely disintegrated contemporary audience is largely just that - a myth. If anything, more, rather than less, is assumed of audiences today in terms of a shared culture. If people assume it's otherwise, then, of course, they get a self-fulfilling prophesy. On the other hand, as JK says, if you DO build it, they will come. (It was only a few years ago that all TV executives were glibly announcing it was no longer possible to make programmes that would command a mass audience on a Saturday night - then someone ignored them and made some!)

Lol Creamy wrote:
It was only a few years ago that all TV executives were glibly announcing it was no longer possible to make programmes that would command a mass audience on a Saturday night - then someone ignored them and made some!)


... and which prog is that ???

Dont Sat peak audience progs only get about 8 million viewers? NOT the 20-odd millions that Morecambe & Wise etc got?

There are far too many alternatives these days. When I was that age there was the pub (which you tried to get into but usually couldnt) and the cinema - nothing else.

These days young people (and families) have far more to spend their time and money on - the internet / mobile phones / skating / bowling / video games / DVDs / etc etc - PLUS they still have the pub and the cinema too.

In The Know wrote:
Lol Creamy wrote:
It was only a few years ago that all TV executives were glibly announcing it was no longer possible to make programmes that would command a mass audience on a Saturday night - then someone ignored them and made some!)


... and which prog is that ???

Dont Sat peak audience progs only get about 8 million viewers? NOT the 20-odd millions that Morecambe & Wise etc got?



You ignore Lol's main points. Morecambe and Wise only got 20m plus at Christmas, for about three shows. That's it. Most really big shows, week in week out, averaged about 10-12 million, so there's actually a relatively modest decline thanks to multichannels, the vast majority of which don't even register enough viewers to qualify for ratings. And executives were dismissing the idea of shows that would get a big slice of the audience, with a broad age range, at weekends - much as you are doing now - a year or two before it happened again. There is no fate about this, no necessity - if there's a truly big show, it will find a big audience, and the same goes for music. Don't try it and - wow - your argument is 'proven,' except it's a delusion.

In The Know wrote:
Lol Creamy wrote:
It was only a few years ago that all TV executives were glibly announcing it was no longer possible to make programmes that would command a mass audience on a Saturday night - then someone ignored them and made some!)


... and which prog is that ???

Dont Sat peak audience progs only get about 8 million viewers? NOT the 20-odd millions that Morecambe & Wise etc got?

There are far too many alternatives these days. When I was that age there was the pub (which you tried to get into but usually couldnt) and the cinema - nothing else.

These days young people (and families) have far more to spend their time and money on - the internet / mobile phones / skating / bowling / video games / DVDs / etc etc - PLUS they still have the pub and the cinema too.

I think the X factor occasionally gets nineteen million and I imagine the dancing shows and Britain's got talent will have about the same. (probably the very same viewers)

Pru wrote:

You ignore Lol's main points. Morecambe and Wise only got 20m plus at Christmas, for about three shows. That's it. Most really big shows, week in week out, averaged about 10-12 million, so there's actually a relatively modest decline thanks to multichannels, the vast majority of which don't even register enough viewers to qualify for ratings. And executives were dismissing the idea of shows that would get a big slice of the audience, with a broad age range, at weekends - much as you are doing now - a year or two before it happened again. There is no fate about this, no necessity - if there's a truly big show, it will find a big audience, and the same goes for music. Don't try it and - wow - your argument is 'proven,' except it's a delusion.

You may be right Pru ... all I know is that TV is now a relatively low choice in the ITK household - we have much more control over what we watch these days (and how we watch it).

I like the old music documentaries on Beeb 4, and also the historical programmes. Not watched X Factor since 2005, and never ever seem the "dancing" progs (life's too short - but I guess there will be a coach potato audience for it, whatever is on).

After all, you are speaking to the man who managed to avoid ALL of the Olympic coverage LOL !

Well, over a thousand have now perused and, I assume, considered this topic; how many of them, I wonder, work in the music industry?
Last time I visited a major the atmosphere was ghastly. Partly due to new technology, of course (I remember a decline when they invented headphones!) but mainly because the employees simply don't care anymore.

Which I suspect is why they don't bother reading these threads either.

When you don't really care for the industry you work in - why bother to think about it, let alone contribute to discussions on it.

And the answer lies in that very wording. In my time (years ago) virtually NOBODY worked in music - we were all in it because we loved it. We lived it, breathed it, heard it, talked about it, spread the word about it, ate it, drank it...

We never fucking thought of it as work.

I've been working in Spain for a while until recently and I haven't noticed the same kind of obsession with demographics etc in music or any other of the arts. The UK seems worse than ever now. And the music industry here is full of people who don't care about music. Depressing.

Pru wrote:
Most really big shows, week in week out, averaged about 10-12 million, so there's actually a relatively modest decline thanks to multichannels

if there's a truly big show, it will find a big audience, and the same goes for music.

According to the Guardian, the biggest TV audience this year was for the Britain's Got Talent final (11.1 million).

Even that is in decline as last year it got 11.4 million, in 2012 12.3 million (combined live final and results show), and in 2009 15 million.

www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jun/10/bri...ent-final-tv-ratings

11.1 million (out of a UK population of 63 million) is hardly mass audience, is it?

Well, yes, it is, actually. You might define things differently. You're obviously arrogant enough to do so.