Elanso

Getty Images, the photo library, is being taken off the market by a private equity firm. Boring, except not. Getty, which distributes photographs by professional photographers, sold itself to bottom-feeding investors because its share price had fallen by three-quarters from the peak. And one of the reasons for that: as internet sites grow at the expense of print magazines, Getty's media clients, and their readers, are less fussy about lavishly produced imagery. Notes the New York Times: "Some of the company’s Internet-based rivals use images as low in quality as those taken by cellphone cameras." And since we're itemizing things killed by the internet, best add the Oscars to the list.

In an excellent post on his awards season blog, the Carpetbagger, David Carr explains the 20% fall in ratings for the Oscars telecast. Executive summary: bloggers watch the show, so viewers no longer have to

They know that the best bits will be archived, streamed and reiterated. The Bagger missed some of the show while working, but caught up with all of it within a single 24-hour news cycle without even trying, through a variety of devices and media.

Nor is celebrity the precious driver of big numbers it used to be. Not too long ago people would tune in to the Oscars to find out what Jessica Alba or Cate Blanchett looked like with a baby bump. But in today’s real-time celeb information economy, anyone who cared probably already knew what they looked like and may even have seen the dresses they had selected to wear on the red carpet.

Celebrities are just not the remote, untouchable creatures they once were — they are our familiars, and we know all too well what they are up to.

Carpetbagger's David Carr