Dammit Zammit: The Publisher's Weekly Warble

11 July 2011

by Adam Zammit

We might have been first to break the news this week of the complete cancellation of the long running Video Hits, but we will be the last to celebrate an ounce of its truth here at TMN.

When Rove Live took itself off air last year, Australian and International artists lost their last commercial free-to-air live performance platform and now with the end of the 24 year run of Video Hits they have now lost their absolute last dedicated commercial free-to-air music platform altogether.

Many in the industry are nonplussed by this news, seeing the VH cancellation as another predictable victim of the rapid move to online consumption of all music product. But to say YouTube is a suitable replacement for committed music programming is to step into the first stage of grief; Shock and Denial.

The democratisation of opinion did, for the first 7-8 years of this millennium, prove to be a refreshing injection of audience and consumer insight and was starting to feel like a new underground movement for a voiceless generation of music passionistas. But as the hype comes out of Hype Machine, it becomes apparent that lack of leadership and respected authority in music and entertainment journalism is leaving music makers without the clear distinctions of success that have always driven the ambitions of future music makers, and allowed audiences (who are less informed) to discover and expend more surely into all of an artist’s offerings.

Video Hits was never quite Countdown, and the ARIAs are never quite the Grammys, but the failure of both as lead commercial TV products in the last 12 months leave a hole that, while many may argue is filled elsewhere by the expansive offerings online, is still a hole.

Ironically, it was the very absence of music journalism and opinion, and their total reliance on user generated content that Myspace management here and OS realised far too late isn’t a sustainable model; before the Australian operation was shut down I was presented with plans by Myspace to reclaim voice and leadership on the site and establish greater authority for the brand and the site...ooops! Meanwhile, Australia remains the only territory on the planet where fading music authority Rolling Stone is without a digital presence because of the awkward JV that ACP participates in with Microsoft in Ninemsn.

Channel [V] and all the XYZ music channels remain now the workhorse of music television, passionately still involved and investing in live broadcast production, festivals and Australian artist profiling; lets hope no one in finance at XYZ gets any ideas! Luckily finance people rarely have any ideas anyway.  The Vines’ recent broadcast performance on Live at the Chapel was inspiring but these events are few and far between. MTV, the only home now of the ARIA chart countdown in any format, is a passionate brand builder and, while a less music-focused broadcaster than it was ten years ago, remains connected and concerned with enough music for all to be glad they are still in play.

In slightly better news, the US record industry brought a creeping optimism to the rest of the Western market this week, with album sales up slightly for the first time in six years. The gain is a significant improvement over the double-digit percentage drops that have become the norm during the last decade. Digital may well be starting to pick up the slack after all.

So onwards, upwards and onlinewards it seems for all.