Frontline: The Merchants of Cool is a fascinating, albeit highly cynical look, into the way teenagers and children are marketed to.
Narrated by Douglas Rushkoff, it is close to ten years old, having been first broadcast in February 2001.
One of the programme’s key themes is that teen culture is fast-moving and transitory. Yet hindsight has proved this to be false.
It would seem that the more things change, the more things stay the same.
The programme was made pre 9/11, pre X Factor, pre Youtube, pre Facebook, pre Obama and pre Spotify (to name just half a dozen things that have shaped our entertainment culture in the intervening years). Yet it remains highly recognisable and relevant to teen culture today.
WATCH IT ONLINE AT PBS OR GOOGLE VIDEO
