Recently I was engaged in a minor conversation/debate regarding the decline in box office this holiday season. It could be looked at from many angles but everyone seems to point to internet thievery, piracy and a comparison to the music industry.
Here's what I think:
Before we lay all the blame at the feet of “pirates” (and I’m no fan) let’s also take into consideration a few other facts.
1. Hollywood makes a LOT less movies than they ever have before.
2. There are no Holiday themed movies which count for a good portion of the Winter box office (Elf, Polar Express to name a couple from the recent past).
3. It’s very expensive to go to the movies. $8 is an average ticket cost nationwide and the internet, XBOX, WII, Netflix have cut deeply into disposable cash availability.
4. If consumers are cutting their cable bills wouldn’t it stand to reason they aren’t going to offset that savings with exorbitant trips to the theater?
5. The music industry is very different from the movie one. Music is a very personal experience that most people enjoy in solitude. Movies are communal storytelling. The more the people involved in the experience the more it’s heightened.
6. While we are no longer in a recession, would you rather take your kids to Yogi Bear for X-Mas or get them the better Buzz Lightyear toy?
7. I am less concerned over box office, which I think is only slightly affected by theft, than I am by theft of television programming.
8. The music industry is suffering, sure. But, then how to explain the 1+ million first week SALES of Taylor Swift and the million plus sales of Kanye West? (Both albums are extraordinary by the way) Even Michael Jackson sold 3 mill of his posthumous release. The trouble the music industry has been having IS the same as the movie, but not what you might think:
It isn’t piracy. It’s noise. These two industries used to be able to pound their fodder into your head through limited ad space. Ad space isn’t limited anymore. It’s diversified. That should be great, right? Except that the attention is split, quartered, vivisected, pulverized. It’s all noise now. Advertising has no “special event” quotient. The Beatles on iTunes? That could have been an event. In 2003. But now it’s just…well, okay, great. What else ya got?
Movies were special. They were events. People talked about them. Now people talk about them…and everything else! Facebook, Twitter, blogs, comments, my god, how could you possibly catch up on what’s out there? How can anything get real traction?
The fight over net neutrality might be the answer. If we take away the freedoms of the net access theft can be choked. But at what cost? And what if, heaven forbid, we create this new world of vertical integration, of total corporate internet consolidation, arrest downloaders, stop rampant theft and the population STILL doesn’t go to the movies? What or who will we blame next?
There are less movies and those that are made are, for much of them, awful programmers. Is the answer to make better movies? Not really. There’s too much competition for those dollars.
In 1980 there were 3 networks and a handful of local stations and a fledgling company called HBO. Atari was barely a home option. Maybe, MAYBE, you had a VTR. And movies cost nothing. And, let’s be honest, by the end of that decade we were still a culture that viewed moviegoing as an artistic experience. The last vestiges of the cultural takeover of the 60s.
It’s 30 years later.
Apple TV. iPad. Hulu. Crackle. Netflix. RedBox. HBO, Starz, Showtime. VOD. Amazon VOD. XBOX. Wii. Playstation. Kinect. VuDu.Blu-Ray.
My goodness, we’ve splintered the entertainment options so many times how could we possibly expect people to go OUT??? We’ve built so many systems to keep them IN! And we want to be in, man. I’ve got a 50″ plasma with 5.1 surround sound and I curl up on my couch with my dog and my daughter and my pregnant wife and I microwave some 100 calorie popcorn and I pour ice cold Diet Pepsi from the $.89 2 liter bottle and I pause when someone needs to go to the bathroom.
Or I pull out the Rock Band set and we all go to town and make a crapload of noise playing together as a family band.
But the internet thieves, they’re the problem.
The studios used the economic downturn and the writer’s strike to kill producer deals and make less product. With less product comes less work availability, so they were able to squeeze performers into taking less since there’s just not as much work out there. But, it has bitten them on the backside, too. Because just like the fact that there was a glut of movies over the past 20 years the cutting back means less for people to see. I’m not going to see The Social Network again. But there aren’t as many options as before. This should be a good thing. Except that less product means there HAS to be less income. The music industry never really got this.
They continue to put out more and more and more in the hopes that something will stick. When the way it used to be was, sign a band, stick with them, cultivate them, sell a few, a few more and then they create their masterpiece and everyone does well. When the industry needed to scale down it couldn’t because the internet and the computer makes it possible for every little shitty band in every town in every city to put out and market their own music.
Think about that: 10 major cities. 20 clubs per city. 4 bands playing per night with no allowance for overlap shorter than 2 weeks (Clubs used to ask for this. They don’t want you wasting your “fan” attraction before you play their club. Band love this for the same reason. They don’t want to burn out.)
4 x 20 x 7 x 2 x 10. 11000 bands. In just 10 cities. So, there’s obviously more. And now ALL of them are recording their “music”.
Holy crap. How to compete with that? How to make it special when there are 3-10 thousand albums being produced a year?
And now movies. We need to not encourage the DIY of YouTube and Google. But we can’t help ourselves. We’re always for the little guy. The David. He’ll eventually slay Goliath, cause Goliath can’t co-opt them all.
And then it’s over.
Pop will eat itself.
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