…our tastes grow coarser and the life of the imagination grows smaller,” says Stephen King in his latest The Pop of King culture column for Entertainment Weekly (Sept 18th). I agree with his statement, though not so much with the entirety of his argument.

King takes a look at the changes within four of the biggest entertainment vehicles and cries foul. Since he speaks not only with the authority of an American consumer of pop culture, but as a member of it, he’s mostly correct. Any serious connoisseur of Hollywood movies has been decrying the evolution (or devolution) of serious movies for some time now. Apparently to no avail, as King points out, for one merely has to check the local movie house listings to find the latest drivel repeated ad nauseum, while – unless one checks regularly – the finer movies cycle through quicker than Lance Armstrong visits La Crouzille. This is nothing new, however deplorable it may be. Why, even today I heard evidence of yet another loss of creativity: the first remaking of a John Wayne movie is in the works.

King touches upon network television and leaves a tip on telling just how popular one’s favorite show is: pay attention to the ads. Consider how much primetime advertising costs and compare how many blue chip advertisers there are for every Tom, Dick, and Harry advertiser. Again – nothing new here; longtime viewers have been saying quality shows vacated the ‘free’ side of television long ago.

As for radio – and speaking as an owner – King says it’s just about kaput. Morning talk show voices and talk radio are just about all that’s garnering attention – and advertising. Seems radio is about to follow newspapers and disappear off the face of the earth. Advertising inundation, especially in this medium, has wreaked its havoc. After all, I can’t name a single person who, given the choice between having uninterrupted music listening or not, ever chooses the radio.

Then there is print. Skip the newspapers and even the magazines; except for the niche markets everyone but them has already been to their funerals. King speaks only of books. Specifically of their demise as viable quality entertainment due to the encroachment of ebooks. Here’s where I am not of like mind. Granted, as an author commanding many digit advances he has every right to be concerned about who’ll be paying them once every book becomes an ebook. But I think that’s a valid concern today regardless of ebooks. No matter who the author is, today’s publishers cannot afford to shell out mega-advances – and they are foolish to continue doing so. That’s another post. King’s primary concern here is the quality of the ebooks that will soon be replacing print books en masse. Or so he fears.

King worries that ebooks will be the end of ‘great publishers and layers of editing’ – and thus quality. He is also pessimistic about the currently established $9.99 price, declaring it non-profit making and simply a ploy to hook addicted readers on cheap product. He is right to compare the process as he sees it to the drug trade, for we are agreed on one point: “Good stories are dope.” While every reader has his/her own favorite supplier, the addiction to good storytelling isn’t going away. It’s in humanity’s genes. And that’s where King and I differ. Instead of trying to (or bemoaning the fact he can’t) force the new market delivery mechanism to fit the current way of doing business, he should be encouraging – nay, demanding – the ways of doing business in the publishing world adjust to the new technologies. There will always be those who want print editions; there will always be hard copy collectors and autograph fans. Yet in today’s entertainment market, where the target markets are glutted upon easily accessible and quickly consumed electronic media, e-technologies are the future. To expect such products to conform to today’s historically inept and absurdly crooked publishing traditions is ridiculous.

Certainly there is a risk of lesser quality. As evidenced by the other media it seems inevitable. But it’s not equitable. Radio and television never had ‘editing’; censuring, sure. But they’re advertising driven medias and have been almost since the beginning. Movies? Consumption driven and, so long as the younger market is the primary target, geared to a self -generating and -propagating dumbed-down society. Print has consistently been the market with ’standards’ of professionalism. Simply because the deliver of this medium is transferring from actual paper and ink to monitors and pixels of all sizes and formats is no reason to bemoan the end of those standards.

In the end, it all comes down to money anyway. Every consumer will spend exactly the amount of cash they believe necassary and worthy of their entertainment time. Being the best quality and value at the moment of their purchase decision can’t hurt.