Mark Watson on culture

The comedian Mark Watson did a tweet the other day which said “Basically the audience gets the comedy it wants (both at local level and in more general terms).”

The point is that the gate-keepers of culture: the channel controllers, the advertisers etc are responsible for guiding public taste. They set the agenda, the cultural bar, by what they let onto our screens and so on. Artists must react to that taste and give the audience largely what they want, otherwise they won’t have an audience. 

Basically: don’t blame the creative for cultural decline. Blame the gate-keepers that have started this race to the bottom.