THE NARCISSISTIC BLUE STATES LOVE THEIR MEDIA
So I’m thinking, “Why not start a new movie company called Red State, do the movies in Florida or Texas, and do good stories without the propaganda?” I was seriously saying this to a marketing guy from Universal and he shot me down pretty good.
“Seen the red county-blue county map? Did you see that all the support for the Blues is big city or on both coasts where property costs run half a mil and up? I don’t know why these rich guys are all socialists and chickenshits but I do know that statistically they have nearly 70% of the money in the United States. All the billionaires, mega millionaires, Hollywood, Music, heirs and heiresses, plus the successful people who make two fifty to seven fifty per live close to each other. There is no big money in the red states, or at least no discretionary money.”
It’s obvious here in LA where choice condos are now several million per and homes can be over ten million. Top prices for homes in rural America are still 50K. In the Midwest and south you can buy a hell of a lot for 100K. Sure there are a couple of local millionaires and maybe a few highly paid skilled people hanging around, but the millions of rich are located on both coasts, the ski resorts in New Mexico and Colorado where homes are a million plus, and the rare counties dominated by universities.
Which leads me to the following conclusion. The Hollywood Left and the Media Left are in no jeopardy. They are turning out product for their blue state billionaires, heiresses, stock hustlers, and college professors, all of whom have plenty of discretionary income and want to be told that America sucks. Their audience does not want to hear about success, only the failure of America and our government. They don’t want abortion shown in any way other than the no guilt no problem situation of flushing the brat at 2PM and having cocktails and dinner at 6PM. Rape is bad, like in really really bad; hurting the trees and animals is horrible; killing people is a groovy visual; they adore helping the grateful poor, launching class action lawsuits, and demonstrating in front of the TV cameras.
The LA headline on Falluja was “Iraqi City Lies in Ruins” and all they talked about was how we’ve destroyed Iraqi living standards, got 28 soldiers killed, and that we’re in a quagmire. If you read the “news story” you’d think we lost the battle. But that is what the upper income readers want to read. There is no room in this scenario for criticism of the latest Christian bashing by Garrison Keillor, which had it been said about Blacks or Jews or by a Republican would have been front page all over the country.
As I write this the media is trying to launch a blue state lynching of that marine who killed the “insurgent.” I am so pissed about this I can't tell you. Kim du Toit sums it up very well. The ever blue LAT (sub) is calling it a war crime, the New York Times and Washington Post are playing it close to the vest, for now, giving it back page even coverage but leaving no doubt that a "helpless Iraqi" was shot dead.
So look for business as usual from Hollywood and the MSM because it’s all about money. And that poor Marine will have to live in Kansas because they’ll key his car and launch insults in the blue states.
Good close here by General Sherman in the Civil War: "I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast." Link courtesy of Mudville.
News from Hell before breakfast about covers the MSM.
Michael Ledeen has a great take on all the CIA leaks to MSM.
Spymasters? The crowd that proclaimed East Germany to be the world's seventh greatest industrial power? The people who claimed to be running scads of agents in Cuba, only to find that every one was a double? The people whose counterintelligence superstar turned out to be a Soviet agent? The organization that didn't seem to have a single reliable agent on the ground in Iraq? The geniuses who thought that Saddam was in a nonexistent bunker on the eve of the invasion of Iraq?No shit Tonto.
Simon has a good take on oil for food if we hadn't invaded Iraq.
7 comments:
[ Which leads me to the following conclusion. The Hollywood Left and the Media Left are in no jeopardy. They are turning out product for their blue state billionaires, heiresses, stock hustlers, and college professors, all of whom have plenty of discretionary income and want to be told that America sucks ... ]
But is the Establishment print media and the Hollywood movie biz increasingly profitable? I don't think so. I suspect that their profits, on the whole, are declining.
Howard, I question your premise that there's enough rich limousine liberals out there to keep the mass market TV, movie, and newspaper Cosa Nostras solvent in the absence of large numbers of downscale Mid American customers.
These Lefty media organs are hanging in there because they have a monopoly or near monolopgy in their sectors. The best example of this is newspapers. Most American cities are ill-served bu having just one daily newspaper, which is owned by one of the big media conglomerates.
In my opinion, Hollywood is quite vulnerable to someone in a low cost, Middle American locale setting up a rival film business specializing in Christian, patriotic themes and wholesome kid's movies. Who knows, maybe Mel Gibson will accomplish this.
Of course a marketing guy at Universal poo-poohs the notion of anyone competing with the Hollywood media Mafia!
-- david.davenport.1@netzero.com
According to the last census New York and California have a combined annual income of 1.3 trillion dollars. If you count Florida (Republican) you are over two trillion dollars. Total the CA, OR, WA, MA, NY, MI, IL, you are looking at far more than half the income in the U.S. in just six states. The concentration of rich is clearly within 50 miles of the beaches on both east and west coasts. If you check the Great Lakes you'll see that lake front property is in the million plus area.
Actually nobody sets out to make a bad movie. The cost per movie including prints and marketing are huge, mostly in the 100 mil plus category. BUT at $8 per ticket on average they need to appeal to the upper end of the income scale first and foremost. Poor kids ain't going to see "Saw" (get it? See saw). Someone has pointed out that at $8 per ticket divided by a 100mil gross means that only 1,250,000 people have seen the movie, that is less people than read Drudge in one day or Reynolds in a week. Their audience is increasingly Blue State and that's the way they want it.
[ Someone has pointed out that at $8 per ticket divided by a 100mil gross means that only 1,250,000 people have seen the movie, that is less people than read Drudge in one day or Reynolds in a week.]
Yes Howie, we agree, the movie theater biz is in decline compared to the InnerNut.
Bear in mind, cable and DVD is a larger and larger part of the movie business revenue stream.
Let's also remind ourselves that the total number of eyeballs that will see a hit movie either in a theater or at home remains larger than the audience for Drudge or Instapundit.
Conclusion: as you've said many times, only big hit films make big profits. But, are lower budget films which are first released on a cable channel such as Turner Network Television a bad business idea? Maybe not.
[Their audience is increasingly Blue State and that's the way they want it.]
Nope, don't agree there. We can evaluate this empirically: is the ratio of movie tickets sold/population size much larger in the rich Blue States? Don't think so.
Are there more movie screens and theaters relative to the population size in Blueville? Are there fewer cable TV subscribers and Blockbuster stores pop. percentagewise in Jesusland? I don't think so.
Maybe some movies with sob sister Lefty leitmotifs sell better in Blue than in Red zones, just as Kerry got more votes in the Blue states. That doesn't prove that Hollywood and the Democrats don't wish they sold better in the Red states, no matter how much some limousine Lefties denigrate Middle America.
Howard, I like your blog, but you are also making the mistake of confusing mean or median income with modal average income in the various states of the less and less unites USA.
There's a lotta poor folks in CA., maybe more destitute people -- that is, destitute absent gu'ment assistance -- in the soi-disant Golden State on the left coast than in states such as Kansas or Nebraska.
Yes, the rilly filthy rich tend to reside in the big coastal cities. The late Huey Long might say, that's where the vampires of a plutocratic blood sucking feather tend to flock together after they've leached the life's blood out of hard working Americans in God-fearing parts of this land. ...
-- david.davenport.1@netzero.com
"... Neither 90210, the zip Hollywood made famous, nor any zip code in the posh Los Angeles-area neighborhoods of Brentwood, Bel Air, or Santa Monica made the list, perhaps because these communities are far less homogenous than those that did.
OnBoard's director of content services, Peter Goldey, points out that, "Many high income neighborhoods fall out of the top rankings because they share postal delivery with more moderate income communities."
Zip code 10021 on the Upper East Side of New York is a case in point. It possibly has more millionaires than anywhere else in the area, if not the country. It borders Central Park and includes stratospherically priced residential streets such as Fifth, Madison, and Park Avenues. The average apartment sells for more than $1 million.
But it shares the neighborhood with many rental units (most zips in the top thirty had an overwhelmingly homeowner population) and a large number of less affluent residents.
According to Goldey, "Million dollar buildings are side by side with rent stabilized properties housing lower income tenants." 10021 is not just old money and investment bankers. ..."
"Old money and investment bankers" --> malfactors of great wealth hoarding their blood money
"rent stabilized properties housing lower income tenants" --> cheap servants and politcal clients, similar to Rome in its latter days
I got this from the www.prudentbear.com chat area:
http://www.prudentbear.com/bearschat/bbs_read.asp?mid=233678&tid=233678&fid=1&start=1&sr=1&sb=1&snsa=A#M233678:
Incomes - Location GAMBLER
NEW 11/18/2004 3:35:23 PM
Six-figure zip codes
Here are the communities with the largest proportion of residents earning $100,000 or more.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - You've driven through some of these places, the bucolic, leafy suburbs where every house is huge, every driveway circles to the entry portico, and every yard is kept manicured more neatly than your Aunt Tilly's parlor.
You think, "Boy this must be one wealthy part of town."
But is it where they really make the big bucks? See if it makes the list of highest earning zip codes, judged by the percentage of households with incomes above $100,000.
No. 1 is zip code 60043 in Kenilworth, Illinois.
According to real estate information provider OnBoard LLC, which created this list based on statistics collected from government and commercial sources earlier this year, nearly 83 percent of Kenilworth households will earn $100,000 in 2004.
The town just north of Chicago scored several points higher than the runner up, zip code 22039 in the Washington suburb of Fairfax Station, Virginia. More than 79 percent of Fairfax Station households will break the $100,000 barrier this year.
In third place was zip code 22066, also in Fairfax County, the town of Great Falls, where 78.66 percent of households earned $100,000 or more.
( Gu'ment employment pays! Vote Democrat and get your share! ))
The only zip from the U.S. heartland to make the top 30 was 66221 in Overland Park, Kansas, outside of Kansas City, which finished 10th at 74.5. Surprisingly missing
Neither 90210, the zip Hollywood made famous, nor any zip code in the posh Los Angeles-area neighborhoods of Brentwood, Bel Air, or Santa Monica made the list, perhaps because these communities are far less homogenous than those that did.
OnBoard's director of content services, Peter Goldey, points out that, "Many high income neighborhoods fall out of the top rankings because they share postal delivery with more moderate income communities."
Zip code 10021 on the Upper East Side of New York is a case in point. It possibly has more millionaires than anywhere else in the area, if not the country. It borders Central Park and includes stratospherically priced residential streets such as Fifth, Madison, and Park Avenues. The average apartment sells for more than $1 million.
But it shares the neighborhood with many rental units (most zips in the top thirty had an overwhelmingly homeowner population) and a large number of less affluent residents.
According to Goldey, "Million dollar buildings are side by side with rent stabilized properties housing lower income tenants." 10021 is not just old money and investment bankers.
The top performers are very homogenous. Few have any substantial minority population. All were in the suburbs.
Thirteen of the top thirty, led by Short Hills, New Jersey (76.7 percent), Purchase, New York (75.73), and Bedford, New York (74.82), were in the New York metropolitan area.
Four of the top thirty were within commuting distance of the nation's capital and five were in or near San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
( Commuting distance of the nation's capital --> your civil servants )
77094 (72.49) was the sole zip to make the list whose boundaries fall within the borders of a major city. But 77094 is at the far western edge of Houston, a city that has grown to nearly 600 square miles (almost twice the size of New York City) by, in part, annexing adjacent suburbs.
In most other places, this neighborhood would be way out in a separate township.
Just because household income is high in these places, it doesn't mean the residents are better off; in many of these zip codes living expensives are very high.
( Leaving less discretionary income to spend on infotainment. )
To find out how much a six-figure salary stretches in these locations, see our cost-of-living calculator.
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By the way, Blogger sucks. I had to wait more than an hour to post this because it was down for maintenance from 3:00 to 4:00 PM PST. As Howie says, don't buy Google.
Newsday Caught Red Handed in Continuing Circulation Fraud
http://www.adrants.com/2004/11/newsday-caught-red-handed-in.php
[ photo ]
The Long Island Press surprised a Newsday employee as he was tossing undelivered Newsday ad circulars and papers dated for the following Sunday into a dumpster. As LIP photographers snapped away, the Newsday employee pleaded with the reporter, "C'mon guys, don't do this to me, please. I got kids. I got a mortgage to pay. I need to do this. This is my only source of income." Uh huh.
In the midst of circulation scandals, Newsday appears to be continuing its practice of overprinting and dumping to maintain circulation base. The Long Island Press also states Newsday appears to be creating phantom credit card numbers and putting non-subscribers with delinquent accounts back on the circulation.
We think there' a new rash of nasty calls from advertisers inundating the Newsday phone lines right about now.
...
Lon-giland, as the locals tend to pronounce the name -- that's a Blue, Democrat place where a lot of rich people live, innit? So why does Newsday fake its circulation size? Why doesn't Newsday keep its sales figures honest and simply raise prices, since we all know that newspapers don't care about selling to Jane and Joe Sixpack any more?
Laker tickets were $110 for fairly good seats, parking $10 and you had to put a hot dog and a coke on the plastic last year. Us smart guys with the bucks buy season tickets and pay for them by selling playoff tickets when the post season comes around. Movies have gone to $15 plus outrageous parking in parts of town. Dodger games are still reasonable for the cheap seats which may account for the three million plus attendance last year. CHEAP rents are now running $1100 per month, and when I was in school me AND my room mate shared a really nice apartment for $37.50 a piece.
I think it's the rich to poor income gap that is showing up right now.
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