The media need a continuous flow of contents that are sent, printed or posted. Every little topic or subject finds its own access to its audience. Hundreds of TV channels are broadcasting around the clock. Likewise many magazines flood the newsstands. Apparently, this bulk cannot be supplied anymore with first-hand contents. The creative power shifts slowly into the second row. Critics, curators and commentators become more important than authors, artists and other cultural producers.
It is actually practical, if people take over the task to sift through the flood of information and to prepare bite-sized pieces. Newscasters, correspondents, experts and contemporary witnesses comment around the clock on daily events. There are already evolving new formats that review and consolidate the flood of criticisms and comments. This way valuable broadcasting minutes get filled with repetitions and annotated comments. Breakfast programs, lunchtime shows, afternoon formats and eventually night programs are developed around original contents.
What is actually happening, if the creativity of the doers gets lost and becomes shifted to this monotonous re-use?
It is easier to report on others, than coming up with something by yourself. The lengthy work of a writer is naturally less attractive for the today’s sprinters, who only have the breath for the short distance, than the quick comment in radio or television programs. Thus, one processes more books per year, as if one would have to write them.
Everyday things become news in the absence of doers, who fill the existing broadcasting time of the audiovisual media and the pages in the print media and the Internet. Accordingly the feuilletons observe the red carpets and celebrate royal newborns. Various weekday formats explain the newest diets or culinary arts. In science formats the Stone Age is reported and scenarios are developed, about what would happen, if humans would disappear from one day to the other. In technology formats new cars are tested and old ones get pimped. Eventually the same is discussed and repeated regularly. Always the same museums, theaters, authors, filmmakers and artist are presented in the public.
Bottom line: The culture becomes impoverished by soft-washed ruminating of few original contents. Instead of reporting on new, not yet established makers, they always pass on the same participants from one channel to the other, from one feuilleton to the next. The spectators lose essential lifetime by being entertained with short repetitions of critics, curator sand commentators that they do not need. The creativity of producing original works and the required stamina go pop. In the end the contents does not count anymore, but only the new format. This could be the beginning of an unproductive era that does not leave anything behind but gimmicky critics, curators and commentators, who contribute nothing else to the culture than their vociferous formats.
