The Merchants of Cool (PBS Frontline) Part 2

Welcome to your crash course in the world of corporate media.

This clip is from an excellent Frontline documentary that my dear professor, Mike Mennard, made me watch twice during my collegiate education, The Merchants of Cool. Each time I saw the film, I was mesmerized and learned something new. If you're looking to understand a little about the entertainment industry's biggest target--teens--want an an idea of the behind the scenes cross-promotion, or (as this blog emphasizes) get an education on who makes the biggest impact on American culture and how they do it, you need to watch this film in its entirety.

But for our purposes now, check out this 10 minute clip. Frontline only mentions five companies as being the seller of youth culture: News Corp., Disney, Viacom, Universal Vivendi and AOL Time Warner. As we'll see later, a couple things have changed in the last six years, but most of the main players have stayed the same.

A quote to note from the clip is from Robert McChesney, a Communication professor for the University of Illinois:

“The entertainment companies--which are a handful of massive conglomerates that own four of the five music companies that sell 90 percent of the music in the United States--those same companies also own all the film studios, all the major TV networks, all the TV stations pretty much in the 10 largest markets; they own all or part of every single commercial cable channel. They look at the teen market as part of this massive empire that they’re colonizing…and their weaponry are films, music, books, CDs, Internet access, clothing, amusement parks, sports teams—that’s all this weaponry they have to make money off of this market.”

Aired in 2001 by PBS, produced by Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin and following correspondent Douglas Rushkoff, this documentary will open your eyes.