Anger Management

April 27, 2009 World Screen
April 2009
 
Can you remember who said this? “I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust…we know things are bad—worse than bad—they’re crazy.”
 
It was Howard Beale, the anchorman played by Peter Finch in the movie Network. Remember what he incited everyone to do? “I want you to get up right now and go to your window, open it and stick your head out and yell: ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’”
 
Isn’t this apropos today? Are you, like me, stinking mad and fed up? Our tax dollars are flowing by the trillions to “salvage” banks, financial institutions and automobile companies whose managers are flaunting behavior that has gone way past irresponsible and is now bordering on immoral. We are paying off the mortgages of people who bought homes they knew they couldn’t possibly afford. Of course, why in God’s name were these mortgages approved in the first place? Unrestrained greed, accompanied by a good dose of stupidity, has reached pandemic proportions. And don’t even get me started on Bernie Madoff or “OctoMom,” the single mother whose fertility treatments led to the birth of octuplets when she already had six young children at home. What’s this world coming to? What’s happened to the concept of the American Dream—the opportunity to work hard, pursue our goals and leave a better world to our children than the one we’ve had?
 
Have you, like me, fallen into a permanent state of disbelief infused with a sense of helplessness? So we reach for comfort food, wine, antacids and sleeping pills. Die-hard news junkies (read: gluttons for punishment) keep following the news cycle online and on TV. I have always looked for guidance and perspective in newspapers. But they, too, are sources of bad news. Every other day, it seems, another one folds. I could not fathom life without my beloved New York Times, and I’m referring to the print version. What better way to start the day than with the paper and a cup of coffee? I’m afraid anyone under the age of 30 can’t relate to that simple pleasure.
 
But newspapers have to find a way out of what now seems certain death. They are transitioning online, but why is it universally assumed that everything on the Internet must be free? Why not pay for at least a portion of what newspapers offer online? We think nothing of paying $10 or so a month to be able to send text messages on our cell phones. Why not pay for newspapers in the digital world? Why not safeguard the survival of quality journalism that will ensure accountability of businessmen and politicians?
 
For newspapers to catapult themselves out of the slide toward extinction, publishers and editors will have to come up with some clever, innovative, out-of-the-box thinking. This is a talent that the most successful television executives and companies have already mastered.
 
HBO: pioneered original programming that defied the subject matter and casting rules established by the broadcast networks. Lionsgate: carved lucrative niches by serving audiences ignored by the Hollywood studios. Endemol: replicated hit reality shows in countless territories. Ben Silverman: took risks on international concepts and innovative advertising models. FremantleMedia: saw the international potential of the Idols format, and extended it from TV across multiple platforms. Al Jazeera: offered independent journalism to the Arab world. John de Mol: created Big Brother, put reality TV on the worldwide map and kick-started the format business. USA Network and SCI FI Channel: perfected the concept of branded cable channels that live on multiple platforms. These are just some of the executives and companies we examine in our main feature about the Game Changers. They have challenged the ways programs are developed and produced and have made content available on myriad platforms.
 
We have an impressive roster of executives in this issue: Time Warner’s Jeffrey Bewkes, Lionsgate’s Jon Feltheimer, the RTL Group’s Gerhard Zeiler, Endemol’s Ynon Kreiz, FremantleMedia’s Tony Cohen, Al Jazeera’s Wadah Khanfar, Tele München’s Herbert Kloiber, Sky’s Sophie Turner Laing and Nickelodeon’s Cyma Zarghami, just to name a few. While all are aware of the difficult economic climate, all agree this is no time for complacency or defeatist attitudes. Their message is clear: concentrate on your core businesses, eliminate what is unnecessary, never stop investing in talent, position your company so it can capture market share when the recession is over, don’t ever take your eye off of consumers’ habits and follow them to whatever platform or device they want to receive their content on.
 

And they acknowledge the fact that all of us, at the end of the day, want to put our worries aside, dissolve our frustrations and escape—at the very least with the help of our remote controls.