Media Consumes Lives
(May 1, 2008)
If you make a half hour TV show and a million people watch it, you've used up 500,000 hours of human life. If you make a feature and a million people watch it, you've used up two million hours of human life.
There are only 8,760 hours in a year, which means that your TV show burns up more than 57 years of human life and your feature burns up more than 228 years of human life for every million viewers. These amounts are not trivial.
We should all ask ourselves if we are providing value for the amount of the audience's life we are using up. And looking at it this way, how can we be surprised if the audience would rather spend that piece of their lives doing something other than consuming media?
There are only 8,760 hours in a year, which means that your TV show burns up more than 57 years of human life and your feature burns up more than 228 years of human life for every million viewers. These amounts are not trivial.
We should all ask ourselves if we are providing value for the amount of the audience's life we are using up. And looking at it this way, how can we be surprised if the audience would rather spend that piece of their lives doing something other than consuming media?