Slow delivery has some benefits

By JACK RONALD
The Commercial Review
News travels faster these days.
Scandals are unveiled, reviled, and forgotten in the blink of an eye.
The jury is still out on whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But it’s real.
As I write these words, the TV broadcast of the Oscars is going on in the other room.
In some ways, it’s appropriate that there’s a month-long time lag between this composition and its publication. Because that’s the way it used to be.
And because I’ve been thinking about the pop culture time lag that used to be the norm.
Sure, when I was a kid, the Oscars were broadcast on live TV just as they are today. That hasn’t changed.
But these days, the folks at The Ritz have already screened nearly all of the nominated movies before the Oscars are presented.
Once upon a time, that wasn’t the case.
The movies, it seemed, traveled by pony express.
A blockbuster would open in New York or Los Angeles for a period of weeks. Then it might play in markets like Chicago or Boston or Philadelphia for another period of weeks, maybe overlapping with the first presentation. Then it might make its way to Cincinnati or Atlanta or Indianapolis. Then, painfully slowly if you liked movies, it could show up on screens in Fort Wayne or maybe even Muncie. And then the Hines would get its chance or the Main in Dunkirk. For a little screen like The Key in Redkey, more than half a year could pass between the initial release and a local chance to see the movie.
So what did we do in between in we were movie fans?
We dreamed. We imagined. And we anticipated.
One of my buddies — Tom — was a devoted newsstand purchaser of a magazine called Screen Stories.
It wasn’t the usual fan magazine. Instead of (or in addition to) articles about movie stars and their divorces and foibles, it provided plot synopses to movies that had been released but hadn’t yet been screened in Podunk.
Buy a copy of Screen Stories and you could read all about the plot of “El Cid” or “Kitten with a Whip” or “The Guns of Navarone” in advance. It was the print equivalent of having someone at an early screening with a video camera and the ability to market pirate copies.
And for those of us frustrated in those days by the slow pace of media delivery, it was something of a blessing. If you read Screen Stories — and I read Tom’s copies pretty closely — you knew something about the movies even before the movies came to town, and that’s a great help if you are an insecure teenager who would like to be considered cool at least once in awhile.
Today, of course, all that’s gone.
The tidal wave of media content washes over us every day until we’re numb. Movies reach small towns like those in Jay County in record time.
Then again, another factor enters in: Age.
With every passing year, we find ourselves less and less connected to popular culture. Name a recording artist, and I’m likely to respond with a blank stare. And with the Oscars, it’s just as bad.
This year, as I can still hear from the other room, my wife and I had only one connection to the awards. Reese Witherspoon had been nominated for her role in “Wild.”
And how did we know that? We had read the book.
That’s another of those slow-delivery media that deserves a mention now and then.