August 2010
5 posts
Hollywood Shorts Itself
Hollywood - for all its bright lights - still maintains a dense shroud of secrecy over how its net grosses are accounted for. The threat of fiscal transparency may have been a motivating factor in the industry sponsored provision outlawing movie-futures trading that was successfully lobbied into the July 21 federal financial reform bill. According to an article in New York Magazine about the...
Foreign Tastes Shaping Hollywood
Seems American audiences aren’t the only ones who dictate the latest Hollywood fare:
The rising clout of international audiences is a sea change for Hollywood. Decades ago, a movie’s foreign box office barely registered with studio executives. Now, foreign ticket sales represent nearly 68% of the roughly $32 billion global film market, up from roughly 58% a decade ago, according to...
Netflix vs. The Public Library
The public library is not only a great place to check out books, but it has also become one of the most popular spots to rent a film:
According to the survey released by the Online Computer Library Center, public libraries in the U.S. lend an average 2.1 million videos/day, which edges out the 2 million discs shipped by Netflix and almost as much as the combined total of DVD rentals at Redbox...
Internet Pay-to-play?
In yesterday’s WSJ Opinion Page, Peter Funt argues that customers will pay for online content:
Yet often overlooked is the fact that virtually all trend lines in recent communications history have moved, with success, from free distribution to some form of pay model. The viewing and listening public has demonstrated repeatedly its willingness to spend for content, so long as there is some...