(Not) Far from the Mad Men crowd…
I really enjoyed the first few episodes of Mad Men, the US drama which is set in the advertising world of Madison Avenue in the fifties (it’s on BBC4 if you’re looking for it), but began to lose interest a little when it started to lose the emphasis on advertising and focus more on relationships… it’s becoming a bit ‘Desperate Housewivey’…
Of course my ‘niche’ interest was perhaps what compelled me to watch in the first place. Wouldn’t be great if people would produce niche content with the production values of mass content, rather than just use the niche as the MacGuffin into (yet another) drama about failing personal relationships & affairs.
The economics of TV production vs. increasing piracy (both the film & tv industries are primed for an ‘iPod’ moment where one device exponentially increases illegal downloading of content) means that this model is, at best, unlikely.
Mind you, I asked Helen about it (who doesn’t work in advertising, which is just as well as we’d talk all evening about it when we got home I suspect), and she preferred it when it was more focused on the advertising bit too… ironically, maybe the glamour & mystique of how the business works they try and depict in the show is what makes people more inclined to watch in the present day… everyone wants to know how advertising works.
Especially the people who work in it…
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