Citizen Culture publisher Jonathan Feit drops 768-words telling us what we already know: the media hopes to pocket the pink dollar. As historically gay media companies like PlanetOut attempt to keep up with the ever-changing queer culture, Time Warner Cable, Viacom and other giants have launched a war for gay viewers. This war, he says, provides an example of a “quiet media war” in which companies are both grabbing gays and avoiding right wing outcry. It’s a delicate balance.
Well-written and thought provoking in terms of media as activism, Feit’s “A Quiet Media War” also takes a stab at historical analysis:
…San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom compared today’s equality struggle with the civil rights battles of the mid-20th century. Two key distinctions separate the otherwise parallel culture shifts: On-demand and globally accessible media has utterly revolutionized how we galvanize opinion. And unlike the African-American community 50 years ago, today’s GLBT community commands intellectual and tangible resources that make it a sprawling, amorphous, international and upwardly mobile gatekeeper.
No wonder people are afraid of us! We gays sound horrifying, like some sort of pink gelatinous monster. The Glob?!
ggreen
Now if we gays could quit worshipping celebritards and big cocks long enough to take over the world it would be a much better place.
Jason
Hmmm…. perhaps I’m taking this all too seriously, but I’m rather underwhelmed with his outlook that the LGBT media consumer is “wealthy,” “sprawling, amorphous, international and upwardly mobile,” as if to imply that “other” niche markets aren’t.
But I get it: the only gays worth marketing to are of that ilk, the rest can remain at the margins until they are a formidable middle class electorate…