1634—Having a phonogram in the corner of your withdrawing room, and five or six discs, is the fashion accessory. Only those who are disgustingly rich and progressive need apply. Music conservatories are begging their rich patrons to obtain them one. Crises as excess demand tends to erode quality control. Quantities are still small enough that transport is not yet a problem, but the search for cabinet makers in Italy and France, capable of getting the acoustics right while adapting the aesthetics to the local market, and incidentally meaning that only the mechanics need to make the long voyages. Explaining what is going on to a woodworker, who doesn't speak any language you do, has no idea what makes sound function, works to a different measurement standard, and, worst of all, has several days travel to ask a question—well, challenging might not be an adequate term. Composers are already begging studio time to immortalize their creations—and the recording section is still at the "Mary had a little lamb" stage.
Mass Media In The 1632 Universe
By Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett
This article is to run in conjunction with Chris Penycate's discussion of the material technology required to produce down-time records and record players. In addition to Chris' hardware, this article discusses the software of the media industry down-time, the challenges and the requirements to create a "mass media" in early modern Europe.
In the days, weeks, months and years after the Ring of Fire, the people of Germany will, in one way or another, be increasingly exposed to modern mass media. The VOA goes on line not long after the Ring of Fire. Crystal radio sets can and will be made by down-timers, based on a pamphlet. The pamphlets are being printed and distributed before the first year turns over. Some people believe these pamphlets. Some don't. Of those that believe that you can make a device to listen to voices from miles and even hundreds of miles away, some will build the device—and some of them will work. Some won't, either because they are built wrong or because they are set up in a broadcast shadow. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. Enough will work.
Most that do work will be listened to by dozens of people. More crystal sets will be made. Expertise will develop in the making and setting up of crystal radio sets. More people will listen. More people will believe. Those people will make still more crystal sets. For the first time in history—that history—all the people within the footprint of the VOA are going to have a new place to get news. Not all of them will use it, but enough will. This will be news from the wider world. News that is not days or weeks old, either. If it's from Grantville, the news will be delivered fresh and piping hot.
How much is rye selling for? Well, in Grantville it's selling for so many dollars a bushel. Not was selling for that price three weeks ago according to cousin Adolph's father-in-law. Is selling for that much as of last nights' commodities report. The result? Comments that go much like this: "Don't try to con me, Adolph. I listen to the radio."
That isn't the only effect. Aside from news, there is entertainment. Characters in radio plays and singers will become popular. Within Grantville there will be cablecasts not only of old movies that people have on tape, but live broadcasts of plays and tapes of new video movies made since the Ring of Fire. Will all this cause seventeenth-century Germany to produce its own stars? Look at Becky in the book 1632.
This isn't going to go away anytime soon. In the year 2000, when the Ring of Fire happened, there were probably a couple of dozen video cameras in Grantville as well as a thousand VCRs and twenty thousand video tapes. Most of them had Aunt Josephine's wedding anniversary or the latest action adventure movie. Tape cassettes, video and audio can be erased, reused, and even repaired. It will be years—or decades—before Grantville TV either goes off the air or loses the ability to video tape what it feels it needs to.
The same is true of audio tape recording of music. Even more true, there are more audio recorders than VCRs. Which means more audio tapes. As of the Ring of Fire, the formerly disposable tapes became worth repairing.
Within the Ring of Fire, the ability to record and preserve sound and sight, not to mention the ability to broadcast—or in the case of TV, cablecast—is not going to go away. The most fragile of technologies, the TV cameras and tapes, will last for at least a decade. Audio reproduction, and broadcast are permanent fixtures of the new time line.
* * *
That just leaves the rest of the world as the problem area. Minnie and Bennie. Reba Macintyre. Various and sundry down-time musicians. All of these can be heard over the VOA radio anywhere within a hundred miles of Grantville. Two hundred miles on a good day. Grantville TV is available anywhere the cable goes. Teleplays can, and will, be made for that limited market. By 1634 or 1635, the Voice of Luther goes on the air out of Magdeburg, changing yet another 100 mile footprint. (There's a slight overlap. Some lucky folks will have to decide which radio station to listen to.) But . . . recordings that can be played outside the Ring of Fire? Movies that can be shown outside the Ring of Fire? That will be harder.
Not that much technically harder, but cost harder. Marketing harder. It's called "mass media" for a reason. Mass media needs a massive audience to work.
There is already one form of mass media in the seventeenth century; printing. Printing has a couple of advantages over the other forms. First, of course, printing is already there. Second; printing doesn't need a player of some sort. When you buy a book or a newspaper, you don't have to stick it in anything to find out what it says. You can just read it. That means the potential market for any given book is limited to those who can read. Not to mention, those who can afford to buy books.
A record, a tape, a movie on video tape or film, all require a special piece of equipment to be of any use. Radio would seem, at first glance, to have the same problem. It doesn't, though. Once you buy or build a crystal radio you get the content for free, which makes it a better deal than buying a book. The same is true of buying a TV, if you're somewhere the cable goes.
The potential market for a record is the number of people who own a record player that plays that sort of record. The value of a record player is measured in terms of the number of records that you can play on it. Buying a record player puts you at the mercy of the record producers. Are they going to have the records you want? How much will records cost next year? And, if you don't have the record player, why on earth buy the records?
For movies, it's worse. There you're effectively asking someone to set up a business that is utterly dependant on another business. You'd be asking someone to spend the money to set up a movie house, a not inconsiderable expense, without a guarantee that there will be more than a couple of movies a year. How do you do that? "Here, kitty, kitty. I have some swamp land in Florida you'll love."
So, how did the businesses get started in our time line?
Partly by a lot of people going broke. At the very least, a lot of people lost a fair bit of money. Partly, it happened because of the novelty. And, lastly, it happened by fairly massive investment. Starting in 1907, Victor would spend $50,000,000 on print advertising and $17,000,000 on catalogs and brochures by 1929. Doing this created the generic name Victrola. Today, Victrola is a name that is applied to all phonograph players that are designed as furniture.
Note: That is first quarter of the twentieth-century dollars. To do the same thing in 1632 means several billion over about twenty years. The investors in Victrola, of course, made a great deal of money. That doesn't change the fact that we are still talking about massive startup costs. Remember, the figure mentioned above was advertising cost. That was what was spent before the Victor Company even got to the cost of producing the record players and records to play on them.
Additionally, making that fortune took decades. Some of that time was "inventing time." Not a problem for Grantville, that. For the most part, Grantville can skip the time taken to invent a Victrola. There are several within the Ring of Fire. Inventing time, however, isn't the whole story. Quite a bit of the time required to recoup an investment was the
time it took to establish the industry.
Why would that take time, you ask? Good question. To have an adequate recording industry you first need a collection of recorded music that is large enough to support the industry. Easy, that, right? Well, no.
Grantville can, to an extent, use up-timer music as a base for recordings. A fairly small extent, however. Up-timer music is in the wrong language, both linguistically and musically, for mass appeal. Modern music uses slightly different tonality and tends to be more rhythmically complex than European music of the seventeenth century, generally. The result? Grantville will need down-time performers. A lot of them. And a lot of music.
Each record recorded makes the record player worth a teensy bit more. Each record player sold makes the records have a slightly larger potential market. That word—potential—is especially important here. The market for any given record is less than the number of record players. It could be anything from a few less for a real blockbuster hit, to a lot less as in it sells only to the people who are both personal friends of the artist and own a record player. Which could be one . . . or zero, for that matter.
The same thing is true of movies, when you think about it. Only, in a way, the situation is worse. In another way, the situation is better. A movie needs electricity. It needs a reasonably powerful light source that even after spreading will be much brighter than the light in its surroundings. The light must be enough brighter to paint an image on the screen. Ah, the screen. Movies also need the screen. If the movie is a talking picture, it needs a better sound system than a Victrola. In part, this is necessary because the projector is likely to be a bit on the noisy side. On the upside, however, up-time movies are unusual and should have a bit of novelty value.
So, if you're going to run a movie house in a town or take one on the road, you're talking a fairly significant investment. Quite significant, really.
This means that you, who wishes to have a movie house, have to spend the money to start a business. And, it's totally up to someone else whether you're going to have product—movies—to sell. This is not the same as cloth merchant dealing with a weaver to get his product. There are a lot of weavers to deal with. It's an established art. Unless the movie industry is very well funded, then the movie house proprietor is looking at one—or at most a few—guys with cameras. Perhaps half a dozen movies a year, if he's lucky. That's not enough to turn a profit. Not even for a part time side business.
This can get to be a vicious circle. Even if the movie making company funds the start of the movie house, how much willingness will the owner of the movie house have to limit himself to only those movies made by "his" movie company? This attitude, in turn, takes away much of the motive for a movie maker to back a movie house.
* * *
In addition to the problems above, there's another difficulty. This is the problem of standardization. As an illustration, suppose you're in a war. Your enemy's primary weapon is of a certain caliber. You make your guns fire a slightly larger caliber than the enemy guns. That means you can use their ammunition, but the enemy can't use yours.
Similarly, suppose you are in competition with Smith Record Player Co. Smith makes records to play at 70 RPM. The Smith Record players only play at that speed. Opportunity here. You can make your record player to play records at 70 RPM and at 80 RPM. As well, you make your records play at 80 RPM, which makes your record players a much better buy, since it can play the Smith records as well as your own.
The same thing is true of movies and projectors, in terms of film size and frames per second. Most of these little differences are factors that either don't really matter, or are judgment calls. Perhaps the slightly better sound quality you get at a higher RPM is worth the slightly less time the recording will last . . . or perhaps not.
Most of theses tricks were used by one company or group of companies or another in the evolution of the media industry. Sometimes, they were used to gain access to the other fellow's inventory while denying access to him. At other times, these differences were designed to lock subsidiary businesses like movie houses into using only one product.
Such tactics worked, sometimes. Sometimes they didn't, but this kind of tactic almost always resulted in delay and extra cost. For instance, the guy who was first credited with putting sound on film stole the idea from another guy. In turn, the guy who stole the idea was run out of business before the process he developed went into use. Delay for sound in movies? Approximately five years.
This dog in the manger attitude was a result of the simple fact that it is really easy to ride to success on the other fellows coattails. In this particular race, the last guy across the finish line has most of the advantages.
Also, there is a bleeeping lot of money to be made. A lot of money. Ah. Did we mention that there was a %^&&^%%% ((&^**%& lot of money to be made in the entertainment industry?
Well, there is. The sort of money that can make people a bit crazy.
* * *
In addition to money, there is power. The power to decide which songs and stories are made readily available to thousands of people would be in the hands of the major investor.
Music, sung or performed by the best entertainers in the world, is a tremendous influence over what people are going to believe.
Which brings us to the government . . .
In modern terms; do you show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" or avoid mentioning homosexuality? In 1632 terms, things will be said a bit differently, probably. The question will be: do you portray a Catholic priest as a hero, as in The Bells of Saint Mary's, or do you insist that the script be rewritten to make him a Lutheran pastor? Do you make the movie with the Committee of Correspondence character as the hero and the noble as the villain or do you portray the CoC guy as a fanatic and show the noble as, well . . . noble?
The government of the USE is not going to want that sort of power in the hands of any small group or individual. And it certainly will not want that kind of power in the hands of investors from some other nation.
We tend to doubt that Mike Stearns would want this kind of power in his hands, either. Especially since he already has stated that he is unlikely to win the next election. Which is probably almost certainly going to mean that anything that even looks like a media trust is going to get very little sympathy from the government. In fact, up-time antitrust laws will probably be invoked. That could mean forced sale at a loss and or fines.
Which means, if you're the primary investor and you're looking for government help in blocking the coattail riders that flock after you, you can just forget it. It just isn't going to happen.
Ultimately, if you're thinking of investing a medium size fortune—which is what it's going to take—in the media business, you have a very big problem ahead of you.
How do you deal with the guys that are coming along behind you? They're getting rich off your investment and putting you out of business while they do it.
Mostly, the answer is: you don't have an option. You may be able to stay in business, but a whole bunch of people are going to get rich off your dime. That fact will probably make your very expensive start-up quite a bit less profitable, at least in the short run.
Then again, there's the long run to consider. Fine. Johan Schmidt, or half a dozen others are making records that will play on their player as well as your own. What's the answer? Make your player play any record. The Schmdits find a really good recording star? Find your own, or hire her away from Schmidt.
By this time, she's got an agent to do the negotiating for her.
These things may or may not be practical. In any case, they are going to cost a lot of money and take time. Both are things that as an investor or manager of a media company you would rather avoid. You have a market by 1633. The VOA has provided you with at least half a million customers who want what you have to sell and will pay for it if you can provide it at anything like a reasonable price. You have, at least potentially, product. Everything from the 1632 version of Bob
Viela's This Old House to its version of Brittany Spears. You have the technology by 1634. The pieces are in place to make records and record players, movies and projectors. Everyone else has that same opportunity. And, in this case, most of your investment will benefit the guy behind you almost as much as it does you. Even if he isn't trying to cheat, it just makes sense for him to make his record player play your records or his records play on your record player. If you're looking at this as an investment, your best course is to stand back and let someone else spend the money to get there first. Then, you can spend a great deal less on initial investment, step up and take your share of the profits. Besides, if you do that, you can spend the money you didn't spend trying to do it all by underselling him in one area and gaining market share.
In conclusion, to counteract the "last is best" effect is going to take a lot of money. Not a medium fortune. A couple of really, really big fortunes. To avoid the media trust that it's a safe bet the government will not allow, you either can't control the various companies involved or your control of them must be very limited. Avoid a controlling interest like the plague. Seek preferred non-voting stock. You can, as a condition of investment, probably get away with agreements about format. Don't try for any control over content. The court will throw out the whole contract.