Core Post 5–Sarah Johnson

So in regards to the chapter on “Open TV” I feel that the piece started feeling really dated. Not only does Disney now own Maker Studios, but Viacom recently bought Vidcon a conference for online video that is used to promote creators. The conference has slowly become more industry related as the years have gone by and now while also offering a career-track ticket they are now owned by one of the top six companies that control 90% of the media most people consume in this country. The mainstream media does not fully understand online content so their way of dealing with it is by buying it all up. You can see Disney’s influence on content by the handling of Maker dropping Pewdiepie after his scandal because he no longer could be justified as advertiser friendly content due to some of the controversial videos that had come out at the time. What a lot of mainstream media conglomerates don’t seem to understand is that the rules and regulations that apply to television and film are not the same as what works online. Independent online video is getting harder and harder to find because of the interference of these companies. YouTubers who have had successful careers in the past are now having to move towards more traditional platforms to continue to thrive in the entertainment industry due to their content not always being advertiser friendly. We are seeing more YouTuber books and podcasts sometimes than output on their original platform. The change in the way these people are able to make money has hit everyone hard. By trying to now enforce television policies on something that started out as not as regulated let consumers decide with their views what they  found acceptable without input from the mainstream media. Videos that were popular were getting featured on the homepage of YouTube. Now videos that are produced by larger entities are getting an unfair advantage so smaller creators are having more trouble getting recognized for their content.