Jackson Spectacle Likely A World Event
Will Michael Jackson stop the world?
Fans have set up impromptu shrines to Michael Jackson, including this one at his family’s house.
Thousands are expected to swamp Los Angeles, California, to mourn him Tuesday at the Staples Center, and the accompanying media crush will be enormous. The tribute to the King of Pop at Harlem’s Apollo Theater earlier this week drew coverage from all over the world, along with a public turnout in the thousands. Given the feverish interest in all things Jackson, the Los Angeles memorial could be one of the most-viewed events of all time. “This will obviously be a huge media event, and with Web streams of the funeral, it may be impossible to say for sure how many people watched once all is said and done, because there’s still no comprehensive way to measure Web viewing,” said Toni Fitzgerald, of Media Life, in an e-mail interview. A handful of events have earned the kind of worldwide coverage to put the world on pause, if only for a moment. The 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy “had the nation locked in a trance for two or three days,” recalled TV critic Ed Bark of UncleBarky.com. The world audience for the Apollo 11 moon landing has been estimated in the hundreds of millions. The BBC estimated 2.5 billion people watched the 1997 funeral of Princess Diana. Watch Jermaine Jackson talk about his brother’s legacy »
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The numbers are easily exaggeratednobody knows how many people are watching in groups or in public placesand the Web has complicated matters further. But in a multichannel, satellite TV, computer-and-cell phone world, the Jackson memorial could have an audience in the hundreds of millions. It was first believed the event would take place at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. But the family announced Thursday that it will hold a private ceremony Tuesday, and then a massive public memorial service at the Staples Center. Fans must register for 11,000 tickets that organizers will give out for the latter event. Watch a tour of Neverland » “You have to go back to the Beatles, the death of John Lennon perhaps, and the death of Elvis Presley to find a comparable figure in, not just pop music, but pop culture,” said Entertainment Weekly critic-at-large Ken Tucker. (EW, like CNN, is a unit of Time Warner.) “And Jackson so self-consciously turned himself into not just an American pop icon but a global pop icon. I think this does have worldwide implications and interest.” See how interest in Jackson’s music has skyrocketed » The circumstances of Jackson’s death have led tocomparisons with Presley’s in 1977, but in terms of coverage, the two can’t compare. The news wasn’t even the top story on CBS’ “Evening News,” Bark recalled, and there certainly wasn’t wall-to-wall nationwide live coverage of his funeral. A public viewing drew about 30,000 fans; the funeral, two days after his death, was held in Graceland’s living room. But Bark said there are parallels, at least in terms of coverage, with the Kennedy assassination. “These days it’s so much harder to get a bulk audience on any given venue the way the [broadcast networks] did back then, but still the enormity [of the event]it’s the syndicated tabloid shows … and TMZ and all the cable networks devoting lots of attention to it, [and] the broadcast networks can’t seem to do enough specials in prime time,” said Bark. “I do think it’s comparative but in a very different way.” Officially, the sorts of events that have attracted the largest mass audiences have been scheduled entertainment or sports programs. Sixty percent of America watched the 1983 “M*A*S*H” finale; more than half watched the 1980 “Who Shot J.R.” episode of “Dallas” and the 1977 “Roots” conclusion. The Beatles’ first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964 drew about 45 percent of the country. The Super Bowl is routinely the year’s most watched program, with audiences north of 80 millionabout 40 percent of U.S. television households. Although interest in Jackson has been high, the number of viewing choices (and, perhaps, the traditional decline in summer viewing) has kept the ratings for individual Jackson-oriented shows down. “Jackson’s death came up in just about every conversation I had from Thursday to Sunday, and yet only 5 million people tuned in to some of those broadcast specials,” Media Life magazine’s Fitzgerald observed. Still, the public memorial service might be different. “I expect you’ll see very big tune-ins on the cable news networks and on BET, if they cover it; they had huge numbers for their BET Awards focused on Jackson over the weekend,” Fitzgerald said. The BET Awards was watched by 10.7 million, the most ever for a cable awards show. “With the celebrity factor thrown into the funeral, who’ll be there, who’ll talk, I would guess tens of millions in the U.S. will watch it on TV,” she said.
It is certain is that the news media will be there in force. “I guess we’re all going to wait and see what the spectacle is,” Bark said. “There may be no precedent for this.”
Source:CNN
July 6th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I was in 8th grade when I became a Michael Jackson fan. I was a caucasion teenage girl in a small town who had a poster of Michael in his yellow/white tux hanging on my bedroom wall, when his Thriller album came out and all my friends/classmates were all ‘thrilled’ about it! I was a BIG fan. But after that album, which I believe was his highest peak of stardom, Michael went down hill real fast….the very sad plastic surgeries, weird lifestyle and the people he chose to keep around himself, they were all very sad choices he made for a person w/so much talent. But how could you blame an adult who qas an abused child – it was bound to happen…
Michael Jackson’s funeral is exactly how the media protrays it, a SPECTACLE. How TACKY can one family get by making his funeral public to almost 9,000 people who didn’t know him personally, were not family or friends of his. And then, selling tickets to his funeral!! How absurd and horrendous is that. What a disgrace and no class that this family has. They should be ashamed of themselves, hasn’t Joe Jackson done enough damage to his children while they were alive, and now he needs to humiliate them in death also?
Shame on the media for spending so much time on Michaels’s death, we cannot control the media – but Joe Jackson could have shown some restraint and let his youngest son have some peace finally and respect his life/death. Elizabeth Taylor even has enough sense to not go to this circus of a funeral the Jackson family has turned it into. So much for all the ‘privacy’ Michael wanted all his life. I think it’s disgusting that all this ‘hoopla’ is being created over a man who was severely physically & mentally abused as a child and probably into adulthood by his father and along the way was sexually abused which turned him into a child molester. The world knows that Michael Jackson is a child molester, his behavior w/male children is not normal and is so obvious that molestation was taking place. How the media can glorify him and forget his trials, makes me sick to my stomach. Just b/c a person can afford the best lawyer to get him off scott free (ie: O.J. Simpson), doesn’t mean that person is innocent. It just means, if you have money & the right connections, a person can buy their freedom.
The same day Michael died, Farah Fawcett died of cancer – she struggled for years to find a cure for her cancer and fought hard to live her life. I think the media only spent 15 minutes on Farah, and then they dropped the bomb of Michael – it wasn’t a shock to me that he was dead, in fact it wasn’t surprising at all. Farah was trying to make a difference in the cancer world while Michael Jackson chose to take perscription drugs and abused the pharmaceutical world to the fullest for his addictions to make more more money to feed his costly habits. His millions of dollars of debt will now fall on his family to pay, and yet ‘fans’ are running out to purchase Micheal Jackson memoriabila to fund his debt and costly debted lifestyle. I don’t support drug users or the like. Strange, America was so pissed off at AIG, General Motors, Wall Street, Maddoff… etc. for squandering our hard earned tax $$$$, that now these Americans are spending lots of $$ to see Michael’s funeral or purchase his stuff – very foolish people… investing in a ‘con-artist’ is what they are doing. I agree w/the senator today who spoke out against the atrosity the media keeps advertising & giving tribute to. Michael Jackson is DEAD, he’s not going to perform at his own funeral, although part of his life is worth celebrating the truth of the matter is, there is one less child molester and victim living in the world today.
One last thought for Joe Jackson, when raising your family, did your tempermeant/anger justify the ends to a means??? Did every fist you punched into your children (Michael… etc) make you feel good about yourself??? Every instrument you hit your children w/make you feel powerful and a good Dad??? Was the verbal abuse you spoke/yelled at them really ‘loving & supporting’ words of affection to help them feel better about themselves??? Did you really think your children could love and respect a man (which you are not) who they feared literally??? Was all the pressure you put on your children really worth all the fame & money that came with it??? NO, it wasn’t Joe…. in the end, it all just ended up costing you more than you’ll ever know…. memories do last a lifetime. I don’t know how you sleep at night Joe… At least now, Michael can rest in peace.