we are suffering by most accounts the worst economic malaise since the Great Depression. What caused it?
People bring up lots of little things, like legislation in the 90s and 00s including the repeal of Glass-Stiegel. But I have a different take...
As I recall, the economy was doing fine, with minor normal perturbations at worst until one day an announcement was made: the TV writers were going on strike. A monster show, Lost, was suddenly left to founder, along with all other shows.
All the people that depended on the production of all these shows started to shrink or go out of business. The advertising model of TV, which generated billions of direct and indirect revenue, stalled as people just stopped watching TV since there was nothing new to watch. Then the jets hit the towers and we had no resilience to resist the effects of that was too low to pull out.
We might have even weathered Bush's ill-conceived wars and tax cuts if our economy wasn't already on its knees.
A year or so went by. There was no possibility of bringing back most of the shows that were once mainstays, even Lost was...lost. (Surprisingly, it lives on in special weekend daytime reruns that seem freshened up with new unknown content.)
But the damage to the economy had been done and the trickle down of the death of prosperity was an unstoppable juggernaut. In fact, TV numbers still haven't come back up.
I think there's a very strong argument to be made that our economy was dealt a death blow not just by 9-11, by this one simple situation: the TV writers' strike. And I don't think anybody else has suggested this, but i think it has validity.
No comments:
Post a Comment