Been thinking about that WB exec who told me around 2008 that the reason there weren\u2019t more \u201cblack\u201d TV shows even though there was a pent-up demand was that a network\u2019s real customers aren\u2019t viewers but advertisers and there weren\u2019t enough that wanted a specifically black audience (tho there were for children, teen, young adult, elderly, male, female, rich, poor, etc.)
Makes me wonder how much the rise of \u201cidentities\u201d in recent online media has to do with algorithmic advertising where the content and the ads are decoupled so you go for breadth and intensity of audience with a \u201cblack\u201d or \u201cfeminist\u201d theme (or any other vertical, like \u201csports\u201d or \u201ccars\u201d) and then the algorithm serves each viewer individually optimized ads for like, Dyson vacuums or furniture or vacations, depending
(And also I wonder if something of the reverse didn\u2019t happen with GamerGate, that games journalism turns on \u201cpreviews\u201d and insider stuff that\u2019s advertising as far as the studios care, rare and in-demand content to readers, and cheap, subsidized content to the editors, with tighter ties and more effort than traditional media ad placement. So studios felt bound to Polygon and Kotaku cause they had the readers, and readers felt bound cause they had the exclusives, and as it shaded from \u201cyay AAA vidya!\u201d to walking simulators and colonialism thumbsuckers*, the entry costs prevented competitors from capitalizing and everyone just got angry and resentful instead?)
* \u2018cause it\u2019s come up twice, \u201cthumbsucker\u201d is an old journalism term for what today would be called a \u201cthink piece\u201d
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