The Users/Producers Ratio
Currently working my way through Professor Davis’ Ph.D. Thesis. Professor Davis uses the idea of the users/producers ratio–the ratio of the typical number of users of individual productions to the total number of productions–to distinguish between various market sectors. This ratio is very high for Hollywood and network television and very low for home video. The trends I blogged earlier will close this gap: as people gain the the ability to create high-quality productions at low cost and with little training, the average audience size for amateur productions will grow. But it is interesting to see that the gap seems to be closing from the other side as well, as the average audience size for Hollywood productions continues to shrink:
As James Poniewozik of Time concluded at year’s end, “the mass-media audience as we have known it” is a distant memory. “It is no longer possible to please most of the people most of the time.” For those who cherish a vital pop culture this is good news. While 2003 was a year marked by the further consolidation of power by a handful of mega-media companies, the audience is not without some power to fight against them. The more we reject embarrassing big-ticket stunts… the riskier it becomes to produce bloated would-be crowd-pleasers chasing after a theoretically homogeneous crowd. Vanity — and perhaps the possibility of found money — might even drive the media giants to bolster their output of more diversified, less costly and perhaps better products that speak to our various niches.
