Klowand-Phänomen, diesmal mit YouTube: Patrick Goldstein schreibt in der L.A. Times über user-generated content.
„Whether it’s (Jennifer) Hudson, lonelygirl15 or Jade Goody, the foul-mouthed ex-nurse who, thanks to her antics on Celebrity Big Brother, is just as celebrated in England as Posh Spice, celebrity has been rudely down-marketed and democratized. As Aaron Sorkin so eloquently put it the other day, complaining about the blogger influence on media coverage of his Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip TV drama: “We live in the age of amateurs.”
Sorkin may spend much of his show exploring the conflict between artists like himself and soulless media conglomerates, but in the new era of You Stardom, Sorkin and GE are in the same leaky boat. Just as the music industry saw its business crumble before its eyes as kids began sharing songs from unauthorized downloading services, media behemoths are scrambling to protect their content as it migrates to YouTube.com and other fan-driven video sites.
“Ultimately these big media companies are all wrestling with the same thing ”” the power is being taken out of their hands,” says Jordan Levin, the onetime WB network chief who now helps run Generate, a production and management firm active in Internet projects. “This is an industry that for its entire history has imposed its model on consumers. They’ve always said, ‘We’ll tell you when you’ll watch our TV show or see our movie.’ But that’s fundamentally changing. The whole structure of people who control content is being supplanted by the content users themselves.”
For Web junkies like me, YouTube is a TV network unto itself. If I missed Bill O’Reilly’s visit to The Colbert Report, I can watch it on YouTube. It doesn’t matter if I’m looking for something as frivolous as the cartoon rap George Washington or something as weighty as Undercover Mosque, a riveting new documentary on Britain’s Channel 4 about the radicalization of mosques in England. No one limits my choices. YouTube’s content is shaped by enthusiasts, not a network programmer who thinks a clip would be a lot more relatable to women over 30 if only it had a likable next-door neighbor in it.“