High End Audio-Gaining Higher Ground?

For me, whether the High End is gaining ground or dying is irrelevant. It would only matter if my livelihood was based on this industry. Otherwise.....I got my gear, I got my music, it's absolutely essential to me and my life but as to whether or not anyone else 'gets it' couldn't matter less to me. When I was a kid I absolutely skeeved shellfish. My father was fanatical about lobster and crab but I was too squeamish and couldn't handle it. He'd just shake his head and tell me that I didn't know what I was missing. When I got older I came to love lobster! I feel the same way about quality sound reproduction, if people can't find their way to appreciate it, that's THEIR problem! The industry will never completely disappear, at least not in my lifetime so I'm good!

Lately I've been checking out the TV show 'Kitchen Nightmares'. Wouldn't it be great to have a show like this but with Audio shops instead of restaurants with hidden cameras and a Gordon Ramsey-ish audio guy coming to critique and go nose to nose with some of these shops!? Of course there will never be enough interest in a show like this so it'll never happen. I remember decades ago when one of the audio digests, TAS or S'phile, ran a series of articles (or was it letters?) encouraging people to write in about shitty customer service and bad manners in the shops. With most brick and mortar shops currently on life support, it surprises me when I read about boorish behavior in the shops. You'd think they'd know better by now.