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Michael Jackson Dominates Media Coverage

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Jul 7, 2009 8:50 pm US/Mountain

Michael Jackson Dominates Media Coverage

Good Question: Why do we watch?

Written by Alan Gionet
Reporting
Alan Gionet
DENVER (CBS4) ― They sang his songs among the stars and imagined him dancing across the moon, and for a few hours, during this most public of memorials, all eyes were on Michael Jackson one last time.

About 20,000 people gathered inside the Staples Center on Tuesday for a somber, spiritual ceremony that was watched by untold millions more around the world as they celebrated a man whose immense talents almost drowned beneath the spectacle of his life and fame. It followed days of intoxicating amounts of coverage on television and cable networks, in newspapers and on the radio and the Web.

It's that strange life of Michael Jackson that had some wondering why all the attention?

"They could have still done the tribute and not had it going on on the news for all this time," said one woman in Denver.

"I don't know, it's like a train wreck. Who gets the kids? Who gets the money?" said a man CBS4 talked to.

"Michael Jackson has had so many of these car wrecks. There's a motivation to stop and as we watch this process," said associate professor of Music and Entertainment Industry Studies at University of Colorado Denver Stan Soocher. "Music has always been a communal activity for societies. In Michael Jackson's case over the last few years, certainly with his personal problems, that's been dampened for a lot of people, so there's I believe a pent up demand for people to celebrate his music."

And just the fact that Jackson was a music star may have heightened demand.

"If this was a film actor or actress we can see clips of their movies, but at the service when the songs are played, they're going to be songs of someone else. Here you have the songs of the person being mourned," Soocher said.

Then there's the size of the fame. Michael Jackson dominated radio at a time when radio ruled the playlists. "Thriller" as the all-time best selling studio album is unlikely to budge from that spot.

"Music has gotten much more niche-oriented for people, they tend to find their own favorites on the Web and listen to those," Soocher said. "So what we've lost through the years is these mass hits and songs that permeate society."

So the fans, clutching tickets that 1.6 million people had sought, were a visual representation of Jackson's life -- white, black and everything in between; from Mexico, Japan, Italy or America; wearing fedoras, African headdresses, sequins or surgical masks.

Dani Harris, a 35-year-old stay-at-home mom from Los Angeles, said "You think about one person, larger than presidents and kings and queens, people in countries you can't even see on the map know his face, his music."

Add that combination to the mystery of Jackson's strange and troubled persona and a continued mystery about his death and you have the ingredients for mass interest ... whether people admit it, or not.

(© MMIX CBS Television Stations, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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