Five Decades Later, and the Audience is Still the Product

“If you’re not paying for the product, you’re not the customer – you’re the product being sold.”  This idea is at the heart of the concept known as audience as the product. It’s an old quote, that is often brought up when talking about advertising. One of the earliest instances of this idea is in this 1973 short video by artists Richard Serra and Carlota Fay Schoolman called Television Delivers People.  The video is a critique on popular media as a control tactic, for the benefit of “the mass corporations and those in power”. It’s interesting, because the two artists actually bought some airtime to broadcast this almost 7-minute piece, playing it on the medium it actually criticizes.  The video is just text scrolling on

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