Did someone order a Burger King burger? Because I see some dead horse beating here (for those who don't know,
Burger King has been caught in the horse meat scandal). Anyway, I have nothing against beating a dead horse. Gotta make glue somehow.
And like the pony we're flogging, dead is what figure skating's popularity in the US is. DEEAAAAD. Look at
the recent ratings for the US championships. Last year's ratings were awful, this year's is down from last year's. At this point, figure skating is a zombie lurching around in America in search of eyeballs, and none are forthcoming.
It's funny that you guys are discussing high vs. low art. That's related to my theory on figure skating's US demise, though not quite the way some of you frame it. It's not the profit-motive alone that distinguishes some art from others. Yes, as
Mathman pointed out, a lot of what is now considered classic works of art were done for mass profit back in their day, the most prominent example being Shakespeare. But where
Mathman and others are wrong is to think commercially orientated artworks in the past are similar to the commercially orientated artworks we have now. Corporate culture/laws have changed drastically in the US. The media delivery system, too. To use movies as one example (and there are many others), the blockbuster movies we have now are designed to make a huge profit in the short term, and not off of maximizing viewership.
To wit: Michael Bay movies, some of them at any rate, may be considered blockbusters now. But adjusted for inflation, or looking at actual box office attendance, or looking at ongoing home video sales, they don't even rank. Adjusted for inflation, Doctor Zhivago (something all figure skating fans should be painfully familiar with, at least music-wise) is one of the most successful movies ever. I'd wager its ticket sales, i.e. the number of people who actually saw it in theaters, are higher than all of Michael Bay's movies combined. This is partly because ticket prices have been jacked up much higher than the rate of inflation in recent years. And that is a symptom of the short term profiteering that plagues business culture today.
Another symptom is WHEN a movie's profits are made. Time was, a movie would trickle out to theater for months, and people would keep going out to see it. And it would eventually build up into a massive hit. Starting with Jaws in the 80s, Hollywood discovered the rush of the blockbuster. That is, a movie that makes a huge bundle of cash in its first weekend. Nowadays, all the top grossing Hollywood films make the majority of their box office money in the first weekend it debuts! Hollywood execs like it this way because A) They want to know they're successful right away. This is necessary for their own survival as the next quarterly report is just around the corner, and the stock market is opening right the next day, and investors are more fickle and myopic than ever. B) This preempts the possibility that a crappy movie will torpedo its long term prospects when bad word of mouth gets out.
This kind of short-term, grab the cash while you can mentality applies to other commercially orientated art, too. Think back to when album-orientated rock was a viable format for radio. That's commercial radio that succeeded by playing 7 minute songs that aren't heavily promoted singles. Nowadays, radio stations are all owned by the same two companies, and the biggest hits are 3 minute songs that have the good fortune of being attached to a viral video on YouTube.
It's not that artists didn't try to make bank back in the day. It's how they go about grabbing that delicious cash that's different. If they don't make a huge amount of money immediately, they're a failure and who ever's bankrolling them will pull the plug. Just think how much that changes the kind of art artists make. Artists can no longer wait for an audience to come to them. They cannot afford to make art that relies on the audience's patience, understanding, deep knowledge or sufferance.
All of this started in the 80s, more or less. Corporate deregulation unleashed the corporate takeover of the US. The de-funding of public education increasingly removed the study of art in school, where people may have otherwise learned the patience, knowledge, etc. required to be rewarded by some art.
How does this relate to figure skating's success in the US? Well, while figure skating isn't pure art, the art part is a fundamental part of it. In the US public consciousness, as I mentioned above, the space for art that requires study and patience has shriveled to nothing. Figure skating doesn't require
that much effort to enjoy, but it's still a bridge too far for modern Americans, who are now positively pavlovian to instant gratification and won't get up for anything else. Sports entertainment needs to be visceral to hold American interests. Figure skating is not.
And then there's the business culture. Figure skating isn't producing the numbers it used to? It gets the axe. It's instant gratification all over again. The post-whack success of skating can't and didn't last. So skating gets shafted, which leads to less attention and appreciation for skating, which leads to more of skating getting shafted, and so on.
There is, however, some very long term hope. This kind of corporate culture has actually caught up to a lot of the content industries now. Like I mentioned earlier, Michael Bay movies, and really most modern blockbusters, are actually not very successful by historic standards. Movie theater attendance in the US is plummeting. The record selling industry in the US is a joke and a cautionary tale cited by executives in all the other media, but one they have yet to learn from. The pendulum has swung too far. The public has been milked too hard, too fast and now all that's puffing out is dust.
Education and arts funding is going to make a comeback, as our three decade long experiment with trickle down economics seem poised for a long overdue backlash.
I don't believe that the beauty and value Americans found in figure skating for so many decades are irretrievable. It will be adapted and changed a bit to suit newer tastes, but eventually, it will be back.
