The Sun-Herald

The Tribal Mind: It's all fun and games

To learn what makes Australians sick, go to Who We Are.

by David Dale
Now is the winter of our mass content. Undeterred by recession and swine flu, Australians are rushing to stimulate themselves in every conceivable way - at the cinema, on disc, via the handsets of their games machines, via the earphones of their music players, on the box, on the computer screen, and even via that most ancient of mediums, ink on paper.

Malcolm Turnbull can yell "Stop laughing, this is serious" as often as he likes -- we don't want to know. Over the past six weeks, more than a million people bought tickets to see each of these movies: Angels and Demons, Star Trek, Wolverine, Monsters Vs Aliens, Fast and Furious and Night at the Museum 2. On DVD, we've bought more than 100,000 copies of Twilight, Australia, and Slumdog Millionaire.

On TV, 2 million people a week watch Thank God You're Here, Talkin' 'Bout Your Generation, Masterchef, and (when there's no competing footy) Spicks and Specks and The Chaser's War on Everything. On our gameboxes we're playing Pokemon Platinum, UFC 2009 Undisputed, WiiFit, EaSports Active and GH Metallica.

And we're spending more than $40 million a month on recordings. The music industry was supposed to be bankrupt by now, but over the Noughties it morphed into a new shape. Nobody buys singles in physical form any more, but this year we've downloaded thousands of digital versions of Pokerface by Lady Gaga, So What by Pink, Single Ladies by Beyonce and Love Story by Taylor Swift.

And that quaint concept called "the album" is thriving. Last month the Australian Record Industry Assocation announced that I'm Not Dead by Pink had gone "10 platinum" (where "one platinum" means 70,000 copies distributed by the record company). These are the albums that have sold more than half a million copies this decade ...

The music Australians are hearing: Innocent Eyes, Delta Goodrem; 1, The Beatles; I'm Not Dead, Pink; The Sound of White, Missy Higgins; Only By the Night, Kings of Leon; Funhouse, Pink; Back to Bedlam, James Blunt; Get Born, Jet; Come Away With Me, Nora Jones; The Eminem Show, Eminem; Odyssey Number 5, Powderfinger. In addition, music DVDs are booming. These sold more than 150,000 since 2003 ...

The music Australians are seeing: Live in Australia, Andre Rieu; Hell Freezes Over, The Eagles; What We Did Last Summer, Robbie Williams; Delta, Delta Goodrem; Live from Wembley Arena, Pink; Number 1s, Michael Jackson; Pulse, Pink Floyd; Greatest Hits Live, Neil Diamond. You may question Australia's taste, but you can't doubt its eagerness to spend money on musical experiences.

Another entertainment industry that was supposed to be terminally ill, newspaper publishing, is enjoying the revelation that its death throes are so slow as to be unnoticeable. The latest report of the Audit Bureau of Circulations shows that over the 12 months to March, the sales of daily and weekly newspapers in this country declined by a massive one per cent. That puts Australia out of step with Britain and America, where total newspaper circulations this decade have been dropping by 6 per cent a year and publishers are in a panic to find a financial model that works online.

Every weekday, 2.2 million Australians buy a printed newspaper. On Saturdays, 3 million buy a paper. On Sundays, 3.3 million buy a paper. Dying? That doesn't even look like a mild case of flu.

Go to Comments to discuss if your amusements match the masses

David Dale is the author of Who We Are -- A snapshot of Australia today (Allen and Unwin). For daily updates on Australian attitudes, bookmark http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.