Consumer digital technologies have planted into the aesthetic psyche of younger viewers a noticeable comfort with the mainstream degradation of the image. Just look at “mockumercial” ads aimed at the under 35 demographic. Patricia Winters Lauro writes in the New York Times that

[s]traight direct-response pitches hardly ever work anymore, and increasingly agencies have turned to spoofing their own industry to attract viewers long enough to deliver a new message…Direct-response advertising as a genre is especially appealing to parody because it’s “so cheesy,” Mr. Jendrysik said. It is an inside joke that the public gets, he added, even the GameTap target audience of 25- to 35-year-olds, who may be too young to recall the ’70s pioneers like Ronco, K-Tel or Ginsu knives.

This degraded image aesthetic was driven primarily by the need for lower cost production with the world wide expansion of cable, but it works with younger viewers because they have become consummate consumers of electronic stories. And, their aesthetic is as much about the cost of production as it is about ‘deconstructing the image’. Think deconstruction of the image, like deconstruction of the novel…

Inversely, prime time television markets and produces its programs more like blockbusters, trying to capture mainstream audiences, fractured by multiple distribution platforms.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/lowered-expectations-web-redefines-quality-2010-2#comment-4be38b367f8b9a7776090800#ixzz0nDAcrO8f

Alexa