I’m working on the ninth edition of my textbook Mass Communication: Living in a Media World. The eighth edition was written in the middle of the pandemic lockdown and talks about a time when everything was being limited.
The lockdown is over, but sadly, the pandemic is not. But even though people are still getting sick, still dying, we have returned to some level of normalcy.
Here are my thoughts about our collective desire to get together once again to celebrate living in a media world.
Back in the 1990s, radio shock jock Howard Stern crowned himself as “the King of all Media.” Over the decade he would be known for pushing limits to the breaking point on his popular talk show, having a bestselling memoir called Private Parts, and having the book turned into a hit movie staring himself.
At the time, it was just about impossible to overestimate Stern’s presence in the media world and his potential to offend. He made jokes about sexual assault and even about his wife’s miscarriage. His offensive content and constant flirtation with near profanity kept him in constant trouble with the Federal Communication Commission. One biography of Stern notes that his biggest controversy occurred when he was on the air in Washington D.C. and a Air Florida plane crashed into the 14th Street Bridge during a snowstorm:
“To express his outrage over the incident, [Stern] pretended to call the airline to inquire what a one-way ticket from National Airport to the 14th Street Bride would cost and whether it would become ‘a regular stop’”
These days, Stern still has a national audience estimated to be in the vicinity of 1 – 2 million people per day with his two channels on Sirius/XM satellite radio, a non-broadcast alternative to standard radio that is not regulated by the FCC. But he does not have the outsized influence he once did.
This clip was one of the few I could find of The Howard Stern Show that I felt comfortable about posting on my blog. But also, I love The Ramones.
Television talk show host and media mogul Oprah Winfrey took over as the Queen of all Media in the 2000s with her long-running daily television talk show, her satellite/cable network, a self-titled magazine, and her Harpo television and movie production company. When Oprah (who really only needs her first name in the media world) listed a title for her television book club, it would become an instant bestseller and a cultural touchstone. On September 13 of 2004, she even went so far as to give everyone in her studio audience a new car, in partnership with car manufacturer Pontiac. But since she closed down her daily talk show back in 2011 and is now in her late 60s, Oprah, too, has moved a bit to the background.
The Oprah “You get a car” moment.
I would argue that in the 2020s, the title of Queen of All Media should belong to pop star Taylor Swift. She is the first female artist to have 100 million monthly Spotify listeners. Swift’s Eras concert tour presale brought Ticketmaster to its knees when millions of fans attempted simultaneously to buy approximately 2 million tickets in a matter of a few hours. Eras would go on to be the world’s first billion-dollar concert tour. In addition, her Swifty fans are estimated to be spending between $2 and $3 million for merchandise each night.
The Eras Tour concert film has brought in more than $250 million box office on a budget of approximately $15 million. Of course, having IMAX tickets selling for close to $20 a seat didn’t hurt. Nor did the fact that there was virtually nothing in new in theaters due to ongoing writers and actors strikes. Those $20 tickets were a bargain, though, compared with the $235 average ticket price for the actual concerts.
In addition to being intensely popular across a wide range of demographics, Swift has also become something of a feminist icon by reclaiming her place in the music industry by re-recording her early albums owned by the Big Machine label. By releasing “Taylor’s Version” of these albums, she is taking ownership of her master tapes and giving her fans the chance to buy them straight from her instead of rewarding her estranged former manager Scooter Braun who had purchased her catalog of recordings.
Gannett, the largest U.S. newspaper chain, even has a full-time Taylor Swift reporter. Brian West was hired for the Swift beat in November of 2023. West admits to being a huge Swiftie, but doesn’t see that as an obstacle to him covering the Taylor media industry:
“I would say this position’s no different than being a sports journalist who’s a fan of the home team,” says West. “I just came from Phoenix, and all of the anchors there were wearing Diamondbacks gear; they want the Diamondbacks to win. I’m just a fan of Taylor and I have followed her her whole career, but I also have that journalistic background: going to Northwestern, winning awards, working in newsrooms across the nation. I think that’s the fun of this job is that, yeah, you can talk Easter eggs, but it really is more of the seriousness, like the impact that she has on society and business and music.”
Swift has even been credited with raising the television viewership of Kansas City Chief’s NFL games because she is dating the team’s star player Travis Kelce and attending the team’s games. There are also at least 10 college courses offered about her, including one at Harvard.
All of this led to Time magazine name Swift as its 2023 Person of the Year. In the cover story journalist Sam Lansky writes:
It’s hard to see history when you’re in the middle of it, harder still to distinguish Swift’s impact on the culture from her celebrity, which emits so much light it can be blinding. But something unusual is happening with Swift, without a contemporary precedent. She deploys the most efficient medium of the day—the pop song—to tell her story. Yet over time, she has harnessed the power of the media, both traditional and new, to create something wholly unique—a narrative world, in which her music is just one piece in an interactive, shape-shifting story. Swift is that story’s architect and hero, protagonist and narrator.
So instead of posting one of Taylor’s giant stage show videos, here is her solo acoustic NPR Tiny Desk concert from Oct. 16, 2019. NPR staffers still talk about how much effort they put into getting a ticket for this little show.
The media world has changed massively since Howard Stern dominated it in the pre-#metoo era of joking about sexual assault and other horrific issues that would never be tolerated now. It has also changed from an era where Oprah, star of a daily broadcast television show, could dominate our discussion of books, culture and race.
The first couple of years of the 2020s were a time of intense turmoil with the entire world shutting down in reaction to a global pandemic that would leave more than 1 million people dead in the United States alone. Perhaps people flooding to Taylor Swift’s concerts and film, constantly streaming her music, and obsessing over her dating life are part of an attempt to return to a world of normalcy again where music can be celebrated with friends, where sporting events are held with live audiences, and we can be creating the media memories that are such an important part of our shared life.