by Tim Wu
6. Amis, Invasion of the Space Invaders, 56–57; Chris Morris, “Five Things You Never Knew About Pac-Man,” CNBC, March 3, 2011, http://www.cnbc.com/id/41888021; “The Making of Pac-Man,” Retro Gamer, January 27, 2015, http://www.retrogamer.net/retro_games80/the-making-of-pac-man/; Jaz Rignall, “Top 10 Highest-Grossing Arcade Games of All Time,” US Gamer, January 1, 2016, http://www.usgamer.net/articles/top-10-biggest-grossing-arcade-games-of-all-time.
7. For these and more facts about Atari’s success, see Jimmy Russell, 101 Amazing Atari 2600 Facts (Luton: Andrews UK Limited, 2012). See also R. J. Lavallee, IMHO (In My Humble Opinion): A Guide to the Benefits and Dangers of Today’s Communication Tools (Boston: bent spoon Multimedia, 2009).
CHAPTER 16: AOL PULLS ’EM IN
1. CompuServ, “Things to Do. People to See. Places to Go,” Popular Science 235, no. 2 (1989) : 7; CompuServe, “He Was a Sales Force of One. Until He Got CompuServe. Now He’s a Sales Force to Be Reckoned With,” Popular Science 243, no. 3 (1993) : 17.
2. Alec Klein, Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 10.
3. Robert D. Shapiro, “This Is Not Your Father’s Prodigy,” Wired, June 1, 1993, http://www.wired.com/1993/06/prodigy/.
4. Ibid.
5. Kara Swisher, Aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads, and Made Millions in the War for the Web (New York: Times Books, 1998), 89.
6. Ibid., 94.
7. Ibid., 97.
8. Keith Wagstaff, “AOL’s Longest-Running Employee on the History of AOL Chat Rooms,” Time, July 6, 2012, http://techland.time.com/2012/07/06/aols-longest-running-employee-on-the-history-of-aol-chat-rooms/.
9. Caitlin Dewey, “A Complete History of the Rise and Fall—and Reincarnation!—of the Beloved ’90s Chatroom,” Washington Post, October 30, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/30/a-complete-history-of-the-rise-and-fall-and-reincarnation-of-the-beloved-90s-chatroom/.
10. EJ Dickson, “My First Time with Cybersex,” The Kernel, October 5, 2014, http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/headline-story/10466/aol-instant-messenger-cybersex/.
11. Ibid.
12. Herbert N. Foerstel, From Watergate to Monicagate: Ten Controversies in Modern Journalism and Media (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 226.
13. Walter S. Mossberg, “Prodigy Has Lots of Promise, but AOL May Be the Prodigy,” Wall Street Journal, October 8, 1992, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1004030142121986760.
14. Paul Farhi, “AOL Gets Its Message Out in ‘Mail,’ ” Washington Post, December 17, 1998, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/movies/features/aolinmail.htm.
15. Brian McCullough, “Those Free AOL CDs Were a Campaign for Web Domination. It Worked,” Mashable, August 21, 2014, http://mashable.com/2014/08/21/aol-disc-marketing-jan-brandt/#XiWBGcICeaq3; Jan Brandt, “How Much Did It Cost AOL to Distribute All Those CDs Back in the 1990s?,” Quora, December 27, 2010, https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-it-cost-AOL-to-distribute-all-those-CDs-back-in-the-1990s.
16. Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks, I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution (New York: Penguin, 2011), 140.
17. Klein, Stealing Time, 247.
18. Swisher, Aol.com, 280.
19. William Forbes, Behavioural Finance (West Sussex, UK: Wiley, 2009), 158.
20. Klein, Stealing Time, at 167.
21. Complaint, SEC v. Kelly, 817 F.Supp.2d 340 (S.D.N.Y. 2011) (08 Civ. 04612), 2008 WL 2149270, at *2.
22. Steven Levy, “Dead Man Walking?,” Newsweek, January 21, 1996, http://www.newsweek.com/dead-men-walking-176866.
CHAPTER 17: ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CELEBRITY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
1. Edwin Diamond, “Why the Power Vacuum at Time Inc. Continues,” New York, October 23, 1972.
2. Alan Brinkley, The Publisher (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010); David L. Larsen, Telling the Old, Old Story: The Art of Narrative Preaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1995).
3. Steve M. Barkin, American Television News: The Media Marketplace and the Public Interest (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003).
4. Edwin Diamond, “People Who Need People,” New York, January 31, 1994.
5. David E. Sumner, The Magazine Century: American Magazines Since 1900 (New York: Peter Lang, 2010).
6. Donald M. Wilson, The First 78 Years (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Corporation, 2004).
7. Based on media kits visited in February 2016.
8. Ellis Cashmore, Celebrity Culture (New York: Routledge, 2006).
9. Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (New York: Knopf, 2014).
10. Chris Rojek, Celebrity (London: Reaktion Books, 2001). “Are Celebrities Bigger than Religion?” Stuff, last modified November 9, 2009, http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/celebrities/2851918/Are-celebrities-bigger-than-religion.
11. Donald Horton and Richard Wohl, “Mass Communication and Parasocial Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance,” Psychiatry 19 (1956).
CHAPTER 18: THE OPRAH MODEL
1. Roger Ebert, “How I Gave Oprah Winfrey Her Start,” in Roger Ebert’s Movie Yearbook 2007 (Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel, 2007), 830.
2. It is then no surprise that it didn’t take long for Oprah’s local morning show to surpass Donahue in the ratings. Eventually, Oprah would become so popular that Donahue would relocate to New York and change his time slot to avoid competing with Oprah’s show. General information about Oprah draws from Kitty Kelley, Oprah: A Biography (New York: H. B. Productions, 2010), 1–8.
3. In 1970, the FCC adopted the Prime Time Access Rule, which was implemented during the 1971–1972 television season in order to increase the level of competition and diversity in programming. At the same time, the FCC adopted the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules, which prohibited broadcast network ownership of syndication arms. Consequently, existing syndication divisions had to be spun off as new, independent companies. As a result of this regime, Oprah had the choice either to sell rights to her show to the ABC network, which would then sell it into syndication and keep the profits, or to run her show as a “first-run” syndicate with King World Productions, an independent syndicator of television programming. As mentioned, Oprah would choose the latter on advice from Ebert.
4. Eva Illouz, Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery: An Essay on Popular Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).
5. Richard Zoglin, “Oprah Winfrey: Lady with a Calling,” Time, August 8, 1988, 62–64.
6. Bill Zehme, “It Came from Chicago,” Spy, December 1986, 31.
7. Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, “The Importance of Being Oprah,” New York Times Magazine, June 11, 1989.
8. In fact, Oprah inspired a series of tabloid talk shows that would produce the noun “oprahization,” which is the “increased tendency for people to publicly describe their feelings and emotions and confess their past indiscretion.” “Oprahization,” Word Spy, http://wordspy.com/index.php?word=oprahization. An overview of the described Rivera episode, titled “Teen Hatemongers,” can be found at “Geraldo Rivera’s Nose Broken in Scuffle on His Talk Show,” New York Times, November 4, 1988, http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/04/nyregion/geraldo-rivera-s-nose-broken-in-scuffle-on-his-talk-show.html. Incidentally, Geraldo used to be an amateur boxer.
9. Additional information about the tabloid talk show format can be found at Joshua Gamson, Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 220.
10. See Linda Kay, “My Mom and Oprah Winfrey: Her Appeal to White Women,” in The Oprah Phenomenon, ed. Jennifer Harris and Elwood Watson (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 58; and Laurie L. Haag, “Oprah Winfrey: The Construction of Intimacy in the Talk Show Setting,” Journal of Popular Culture 26 (1993):
115–22.
11. Oprah is further quoted as explaining that she hoped to help individuals come “to the awareness that, ‘I am Creation’s son. I am Creation’s daughter. I am more than my physical self…ultimately I am Spirit come from the greatest Spirit. I am Spirit.” For more on this analysis, see Kathryn Lofton, Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 4.
12. Kelley, Oprah: A Biography, 3.
13. Susan Mackey-Kallis is a communications professor at Villanova University and is quoted in Susan Berfield, “Brand Oprah Has Some Marketing Lessons,” Bloomberg Business, May 19, 2011, http://business.time.com/2011/05/24/how-oprah-winfrey-implicitly-endorses-consumerism-and-materialism. Noted in the article is how Winfrey’s message of consumerism is genuine, as opposed to ironic.
14. Tarini Parti, “The ‘Oprah Effect’: Winfrey’s Influence Extends Deep into Politics,” Open.Secrets.org: Center for Responsive Politics, May 25, 2011, http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/05/the-oprah-effect-winfreys-influence-extends-deep-into-politics/. Garthwaite coauthored a study that explored the impact of celebrity endorsements in the outcome of the 2008 elections. The article reports how Winfrey’s “endorsement of President Barack Obama was responsible for 1 million of his votes in the Democratic primary.”
15. Kelley, Oprah: A Biography, 399.
16. The relevant episode featured sleep expert Dr. Michael Bennett, who highlighted various products that help individuals sleep well. The effect of Winfrey’s endorsement continued for months, with sales at five times higher than before. For more information, see M. David Hornbuckle, “The Oprah Effect,” Inc., August 4, 2009, http://www.inc.com/articles/2009/08/oprah.html.
17. As described in The New York Times, Winfrey announced her book club “in save-your-soul evangelist mode…that she wanted ‘to get the country reading.’ ” For more about the impact of Oprah’s Book Club, see Gayle Feldman, “Making Book on Oprah,” New York Times, February 2, 1997, https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/02/02/bookend/bookend.html; and D. T. Max, “The Oprah Effect,” New York Times Magazine, December 26, 1999, 36-41.
18. Oprah started her “Favorite Things” show in 1999, and in 2007 she presented her viewers with her most expensive item. The grand total for that year’s “Favorite Things” was $7,200. Kelley, Oprah.
19. P. J. Bednarski, “All About Oprah Inc.,” Broadcasting & Cable, January 23, 2005.
20. Jack Neff, “How to Get Your Brand on ‘Oprah,’ ” Advertising Age, June 2, 2008.
21. Statement by Harpo Productions, Oprah’s production company, that “tightly controls advance and post-publicity about the praise that gets parceled out.”
22. Oprah’s website featured information about the Law of Attraction in 2007.
23. Rhonda Byrne, The Secret (New York: Atria, 2006).
24. Albert Mohler, “The Church of Oprah Winfrey—A New American Religion?,” Albert Mohler, November 29, 2005, http://www.albertmohler.com/2005/11/29/the-church-of-oprah-winfrey-a-new-american-religion-2/.
25. Michael Shermer, “The (Other) Secret,” Scientific American, June 1, 2007.
26. An analysis by two economists at the University of Maryland, College Park, estimated that Winfrey’s endorsement was responsible for between 420,000 and 1,600,000 votes for Obama in the Democratic primary based on a sample of states that did not include Texas, Michigan, North Dakota, Kansas, or Alaska.
27. Ben Shapiro, “The Oprah Schnook Club,” Townhall.com, March 19, 2003, http://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2003/03/19/the_oprah_schnook_club/page/full.
28. For examples of fan comments, see Carol Costello, “Oprah Getting Backlash from Some Fans for Obama Support,” CNN Political Ticker Blog, December 14, 2007, http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/12/14/oprah-getting-backlash-from-some-fans-for-obama-support/.
29. Variety has recognized The Haves and Have Nots, written and directed by Tyler Perry, as OWN’s most popular series to date. See Rick Kissel, “Ratings: OWN’s ‘The Haves and Have Nots’ Hits Series Highs,” Variety, September 23, 2015, http://variety.com/t/the-haves-and-the-have-nots/.
CHAPTER 19: THE PANOPTICON
1. Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks, I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution (New York: Penguin, 2011), 385.
2. Nina Blackwood et al., VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV’s First Wave (New York: Atria, 2013).
3. David Copeland, The Media’s Role in Defining the Nation: The Active Voice (New York: Peter Lang, 2010).
4. Tannenbaum and Marks, I Want My MTV, 385.
5. Ibid., 389.
6. Ibid., 550.
7. Daniel B. Morgan, Last Stage Manager Standing (New York: Page Publishing, 2015).
8. Tannenbaum and Marks, I Want My MTV, 551.
9. Jeffrey Ruoff, An American Family: A Televised Life (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 65; italics added.
10. Ibid., xv.
11. Margaret Mead, panel discussion for An American Family (PBS), WNET, 1973.
12. Tannenbaum and Marks, I Want My MTV, 551.
13. Ibid., 553.
14. John J. O’Connor, “ ‘The Real World,’ According to MTV,” New York Times, July 9, 1992, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/09/arts/review-television-the-real-world-according-to-mtv.html.
15. Matt Roush, “MTV’s Painfully Bogus ‘Real World,’ ” USA Today, May 21, 1992.
16. O’Connor, “ ‘The Real World,’ According to MTV.”
17. Meredith Blake, “The Real World: ‘This Is the True Story…,’ ” A.V. Club, June 6, 2011, http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/the-real-world-this-is-the-true-story-57041.
18. Jonathan Gray et al., Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era (New York: NYU Press, 2009), 250; Samantha Murphy Kelly, “The Real World’s Big Bullying Problem,” Mashable, February 10, 2015, http://mashable.com/2015/02/10/real-world-skeletons-bullying-problem/#kJ_YeAQ5zZqa.
19. Andrew Corbus and Bill Guertin, Reality Sells: How to Bring Customers Back Again and Again by Marketing Your Genuine Story (El Monte, CA: WBusiness Books, 2007), 1.
20. Tannenbaum and Marks, I Want My MTV, 552.
21. Ruoff, An American Family, 120.
22. Annette Hill, Reality TV: Audiences and Popular Factual Television (New York: Routledge, 2005), 7.
23. “10 Years of Primetime: The Rise of Reality and Sports Programming,” Nielsen, September 21, 2011, http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2011/10-years-of-primetime-the-rise-of-reality-and-sports-programming.html.
24. Ginia Bellafante, “The All-Too-Easy Route to Stardom,” New York Times, October 13, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/arts/television/13bell.html?_r=0.
25. Amaya Rivera, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians: Season 1,” PopMatters, October 15, 2008, http://www.popmatters.com/review/keeping-up-with-the-kardashians-season-1/.
26. Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, “How Kim Kardashian Turns the Reality Business into an Art,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 2, 2011, http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/11/02/how-kim-kardashian-turns-the-business-of-self-promotion-into-an-art/.
PART V: WON’T BE FOOLED AGAIN
1. Iain Rodger, “1999: The Year of the Net,” BBC News, December 30, 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/574132.stm; James A. Martin, “New Year’s on the Net,” CNN.com, December 31, 1999, http://www.cnn.com/1999/TECH/computing/12/31/newyear.net.idg/.
2. “EarthCam’s Webcast of the Century Provides the Most Comprehensive Coverage of the Biggest Web Celebration in History—From Times Square and Around the World,” EarthCam.com, December 20, 1999, http://www.earthcam.com/press/pr-rel_122099.htm.
3. Jeff Jarvis, “The Dinosaurs Whine,” Buzz Machine, January 31, 2006, http://buzzmachine.com/2006/01/31/the-dinosaurs-whine/.
4. In 1999
, television producer Michael Davies attempted to revive The $64,000 Question for ABC, but abandoned the effort to work on an American version of the British game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? See David Baber, Television Game Show Hosts: Biographies of 32 Stars (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008).
5. Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas (New York: Random House, 2001).
CHAPTER 20: THE KINGDOM OF CONTENT
1. In fact, Microsoft’s performance was so strong that company shares soared from $2.375 per share to $136.375 per share. For more information about Microsoft’s performance in 1996, see Lawrence M. Fisher, “Microsoft Proves Even Stronger than Wall Street Had Expected,” New York Times, October 22, 1996, http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/22/business/microsoft-proves-even-stronger-than-wall-street-had-expected.html.
2. While the full text of the essay is no longer available on the Microsoft website, a copy of the text can be found as reproduced by Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) at Bill Gates, “Content Is King,” January 3, 1996, http://web.archive.org/web/20010126005200/http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/columns/1996essay/essay960103.asp.
3. “Content Is King.”
4. The satellite campus, known as “Red West,” ultimately shifted its focus back to developing “ubiquitous, utilitarian” products with the eventual failure of MSN. As a result, programmers would instead create practical “services” such as Expedia. See Amy Harmon, “More Geek, Less Chic; After a Tryout at Microsoft, the Hip Gives Way to the Really Useful,” New York Times, October 13, 1997, http://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/13/business/more-geek-less-chic-after-tryout-microsoft-hip-gives-way-really-useful.html?pagewanted=all. For an overview of Microsoft’s efforts to develop multimedia-based products, see Denise Caruso, “Microsoft Morphs into a Media Company,” Wired, June 1, 1996, http://www.wired.com/1996/06/microsoft-6/.