It's Not the Stupidity, Stupid

I am allowed to riff on my own book title, but I had a second "clarifying moment", as the Prez likes to say, this week. I was socializing with some folks, one of whom was a broadcasting executive. And, in the midst of the usual conversation about New Orleans (Exec: how's it doing? Me: fine, no thanks to the national media. Exec: what do you mean?), this person uttered the kind of statement you think these people say but you never actually hear: "The audience is stupid".

Now this isn't a jerk, far from it. This is a smart, humorous, charming guy--or gal--who runs a non-insignificant broadcast property. The comment might just be a weekend blowoff of steam after a bad ratings book (or some crap from upstairs), but, in thinking about my jeremiad regarding our apparent inability to recognize an "outrage upon human dignity", I connected these particular dots. The problem with drawing that conclusion about the audience, I think, is that you start programming down to them. Whether or not they actually started out stupid, your programming decisions may help make them stupid. It's the converse of what the great comedian Mort Sahl has said, wildly paraphrased: always assume your audience is as smart as you are, whether or not it's true, you'll do better work. A broadcast industry which programs up, which assumes its audience is as intelligent as its executives, may or may not make that audience smarter, but, at the very least, it won't make them dumber. In today's "culture", that's a major accomplishment.