Yesterday I saw Joop van de Ende at ‘Zomergasten’. He brought a fragment of the English edition of Big Brother to demonstrate a change in the media landscape he disapproves and illustrate his argument for quality tv. The big difference between the English and the Dutch edition is the way the English program concentrates on stories and the Dutchies are aiming for effect. The result of both strategies is different and one seems to generate a long term bond with the program, while the other creates just a short term bond.
The dutch Big Brother was set up from the beginning to generate a short term effect. The casting of the residents was done to get people that were quite sure to shock the viewer and the way the program was edited had to lead to intensify these shock moments. The result? Big Brother became an instantaneous big hit. People had never seen this before, one shock after the other and each shock tended to be bigger then the preceding one. That’s all? No, the first seasons (and especially the first) might have been a great success, but the program does not exist any more on Dutch tv. Its successor ‘De gouden kooi’ got a lot of attention in the media, but not by the viewers and was ended before planned.
In England the format was a bit different. The casting was done by people with experience in drama and the editing was done to emphasize story lines and character development. Big Brother in England was also a big success and in contradiction to the Dutch version it still is. Van de Ende attributed the ongoing success of the program to the quality of a developing story, as seen in soap operas. He argues that for the long term survival of a program, and thereby the survival of the medium, this quality standard is essential. This goes even for programs like Big Bother, which he judged to be superficial and lacking the beauty he himself is interested in.
My point here is that media like Youtube are broadcasting a lot of (probably the core part of its content or best viewed movies) shock generating programs that gain instant success, but very soon disappear again. Now it is not yet a problem, the medium is still new and people are still looking to be shocked, but as happened with Big Brother in Holland I recon people will just as much get bored with it and turn away from it. Doesn’t seem like a big deal, but in the meanwhile it maybe has made other media disappear and there is a cultural loss. And that is to me the most important argument of Andrew Keen. He pleas for gatekeepers to protect the cultural business and he is right about that in my opinion. We need people with taste to protect us from our own need for shocks. We need people like Joop van de Ende is referring to, people that can tell stories.
