Trying to guess what the (mass) audience wants and then trying to satisfy that is usually a bad recipe for getting something good.
I think the joy of any soap opera is it is always there. You are allowed into this world for a little while and it's safe in that you are watching other people go through some troubles rather than yourself. It's there every night, and there is something special about that sort of terrestrial television experience for a mass audience.
The mass audience doesn't want to see you if you aren't perfect. If you don't look a certain way, if you don't have big pecs and great skin and the perfect eyes. And it's unfortunate, because kids are growing up with body image dysmorphia because not everyone is represented on the screen.
To reach a mass audience, you have to offer more than just hostility.
A lot of people think technology is a solution, but it's really just a canvas for your work. It can make good things amazing and bad things terrible. Facebook allows you to have access to mass audience really quickly if you do creative really well.
In the case of the Web, each of us has slightly more access to a mass audience - a few more people slide through the door - but Facebook is finally a crude, personal multimedia conglomerate machine, personal nation-state machine, reality-show machine. New gadgets alter social patterns, new media eclipse old ones, but the pyramid never goes away.
Drama or comedy programming is still the surest way for advertisers to reach a mass audience. Once that changes, all bets are off.
There is no such thing as a Mass Mind. The Mass Audience is made up of individuals, and good advertising is written always from one person to another. When it is aimed at millions it rarely moves anyone.
Steven Spielberg is unique. I feel that the kinds of movies he loves are the same kinds of movies that the big mass audience loves. He's very fortunate because he can do the things he naturally likes the best, and he's been very successful.
If you game Facebook and Google in the right way, then you can achieve a mass audience.
