“Oops I Did it Again!”

Since I am blogging it up, I decided to visit Mr. Seacrest’s page to see what types of advertising and pop news saturate his website. Was I in for a mass communication treat! One of the headlines read: “I’m Not a Babysitter- I’m a Performer", and covered the racy story of Adam Lambert's smooch with a male keyboardist and some other bold dance moves at the American Music Awards performance on November 22nd. Access Hollywood caught up with Adam, also, and the video below gives you an idea of what the performance looked like, along with Adam's own comments. Due to the sexually charged show, runner-up American idol star Lambert’s “Good Morning, America” performance for the following day was cancelled by ABC. According to a Rolling Stone article, there were 1,500 complaints telephoned into ABC regarding the risqué performance. Now, we can all recall the Madonna make-out sessions with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera back in 2003 on the MTV Video Music Awards. It would be interesting to discuss and analyze double standards, normative versus non-normative behavior, and the sexual acts of pop stars on the stage from the past, but maybe a different day.

I am more concerned with how this particular incident fits in nicely with our recent class topic of media conglomerates. The Walt Disney Corporation owns ABC through a $19 billion deal in 1995 (Severin & Tankard, Jr., 2001, p. 348). In my view, Disney is a conservative company in terms of content. The Disney empire (theme parks, animated and feature films, and publishing) caters to a young target market. Did Disney cut the Lambert performance from ABC’s “Good Morning, America” because it could tarnish the company’s conservative reputation? Although I am not certain, I assume they are playing it safe in an unexplored territory of pop culture society. It does bother me that the media has great control on what we see and what we don’t see. From our reading of media conglomerates, there was a story about ABC’s program, 20/20, intending to do a news story on the dangers of theme-parks due to pedophilia and poor security (Severin & Tankard, Jr., 2001, p. 361). Since Disney was one of the theme-parks named, the story was shot down. In media conglomerates, CEOs and strategists need to leverage all of their media companies, and in doing so, must work together within all media channels to promote revenue- not losses! This means being partial and withholding information if necessary.

So, if we know Disney will have ABC censor content that could be risky for the conservative reputation and the potential profits in a particular business, what else do they censor? If the lifeblood of the media is pure profits, I would have to agree with Suda on many of her viewpoints throughout the semester. The mass media are all around us, and we are forced to digest it in its profit-driven form. The only way to avoid it is to live like Thoreau in the woods. Mr. Lambert showed the world a sex-based performance (as pop culture demands), yet he may have hurt himself more by wrestling with a 500 lb. gorilla that has the final call on content. I am curious to see if ABC can forgive him, and how this performance will affect his career. Luckily, his brand new album, “For Your Entertainment”, was produced by RCA, which is currently owned by Sony and Bertelsmann (50/50 ownership). I wonder how many musical entertainers have been under fire by a media conglomerate, and how the issue was handled. I’m pretty sure it gets nasty.


Severin, W. J. & Tankard, Jr., J. (2001).Communication theories: Origins,
methods, and uses in the mass media(5th ed.). New York, NY: Longman, 348,361.