Archive for November 7, 2008

It’s The Economy, Stupid!

We’re seeing lots of articles about how bad the economy is. The unemployment rate’s up - way up and the stock market is down.That’s having a predictable effect. The companies that hire us are seeing declines in the money coming in, and they’re cutting back.

One summary that has been e-mailed to us by several of you is in the LA Times blogs this morning,  and what it says isn’t good. As revenues decline, rather than trying to offer more and better product, several studios are cutting the number of theatrical releases, claiming that they’ll save money on marketing costs.

To us, that’s short sighted - the marketing money is what primes the pump of ticket sales - but their theory seems to be that it doesn’t matter how much you spend now, people aren’t going to buy tickets or DVDs in numbers large enough to justify making a lot of pictures. Anyone who wants to connect the dots to the TV-Theatrical negotiations should feel free… 

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