Celeb Media Frenzy

My youngest son just completed the college application process with all of the typical family tensions. Each evening for the past six weeks, he would be up late finishing his homework first and then composing crafty answers to essay questions. To the question, "What outrages you most" he wrote about the public fascination with celebrities and the media's eager willingness to feed this fascination -- like Burger King serving triple Whoppers to the obese. In his view, what was once a healthy escape in moderation has now become an obsession at the expense of dealing with weightier societal issues.

Having been the General Manager of PEOPLE magazine in the mid-eighties, I read his essay with added interest. PEOPLE was launched by Time Inc. in 1976; its genesis being the two-page "people" spread in TIME magazine. PEOPLE invented celebrity journalism and remains today -- more than 30 years after its launch -- the most commercially successful and profitable magazine in the world.

The idea behind PEOPLE was to apply TIME magazine's successful editorial formula -- quality reporting and writing backed by double fact checking -- to the subject of people. The editorial premise was "ordinary people doing extraordinary things and extraordinary people doing ordinary things." The reader might be inspired by a small town hero and then, turn the page and get satisfaction from knowing that even celebrities had their share of problems and issues. In its early years, the tabloid voltage was kept in check and balance with a mix of human interest stories.

PEOPLE not only created a magazine category now filled with titles such as US, OK!, HELLO, STAR and IN TOUCH -- but also instigated the endless rise of celebrity coverage on TV and the Internet -- including ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT, THE HOLLYWOOD INSIDER, TMZ, E!, CELEBRITY APPRENTICE and countless other reality shows. As the competition grew and spread across media, so did the level of sensationalism. Any person in the public domain was fair game to be profiled -- and no subject was off limits -- privacy barriers were virtually eliminated.

The obsession with celebrity was at its peak this week with the death of Heath Ledger. The building where Ledger lived is just around the block from my office in SOHO. For over 48 continuous hours, news trucks -- equipped with digital video production equipment and transmission antennas two stories high -- lined the blocks at the intersection of Broome and Lafayette. The morning after the death -- at the early hour of 6am -- I counted 15 of these trucks each staffed with a team of many including on camera reporters, producers, writers, editors and technicians.

After the announcement and before the autopsy report, what more was there to say about the death? The cost of this on-site operation must have been enormous. And there was little journalistic pay-off to justify the expense. I watched a variety of entertainment and "news" shows which featured segments about Ledger and would hardly call the coverage journalism -- speculation, rumor and tid-bits were the means to differentiate the story as opposed to in-depth reporting, research and fact checking.

The coverage was way overboard and made no sense at all -- on editorial, economic or marketing levels. Nothing much more was said yet at a significant cost premium. This is the flaw of modern media -- particularly old media such as television and print --spending considerable money in the hopes of creating a huge audience to generate sufficient advertising dollars to pay for the cost. It's hard to believe that this business formula is sustainable.

And, did the viewing and reading public actually want continuous coverage of Heath Ledger's death? I doubt it. At some point, reason must set in and attention spans must fade.

But perhaps I am wrong. Maybe the "Quadruple Whopper" would be a huge marketing hit. No wonder my son is outraged by the obsession with celebrities.