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Blockbusters: Why Big Hits and Big Risks are the Future of the Entertainment Business: Difference between revisions
Blockbusters: Why Big Hits and Big Risks are the Future of the Entertainment Business (view source)
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If you only see one movie a year, it’s not likely to be ''Dersu Uzala''. | If you only see one movie a year, it’s not likely to be ''Dersu Uzala''. | ||
If you are a movie executive, this ought not to rock your world. It certainly | If you are a movie executive, this ought not to rock your world. It certainly isn’t a function of the information revolution, and would have been as true when Derzu Uzala was released in 1976 as it is today. Yet it is the intellectual cornerstone of {{author|Anita Elberse}}’s provocative new book “Blockbusters” which dismantles that new-age canard of the [[Long Tail]]. | ||
Elberse’s hook is simple: if you are a global media conglomerate, you are better betting the farm on a small number of “blockbuster” projects than managing for margins across a diverse portfolio of smaller projects. Elberse compares Warner, who did this, which NBC TV — and latterly, I wonder, Netflix — who did not, and reaches her conclusion. | Elberse’s hook is simple: if you are a global media conglomerate, you are better betting the farm on a small number of “blockbuster” projects than managing for margins across a diverse portfolio of smaller projects. Elberse compares Warner, who did this, which NBC TV — and latterly, I wonder, Netflix — who did not, and reaches her conclusion. | ||
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This is really only sound common sense. | This is really only sound common sense. | ||
The question which Elberse | The question which Elberse doesn’t address is what effect this has on the statistical distribution of film budgets. If every producer applies a blockbuster strategy in its own segment, this will tend to make the head taller and fatter, and the tail skinnier and, at the limit, shorter. And so it transpires: According to the Financial Times, in 2000, 1 per cent of artists accounted for 71 per cent of pop music sales. Last year, the same proportion accounted for 77 per cent. | ||
Perhaps Elberse's theory, which owes nothing at all to the digital revolution, suggests the anointed few are getting smarter, and are hitting their channels more clinically than they used to. But down the tail lurks a much more interesting question: what happened? How was {{author|Chris Anderson}} so wrong? How is it that, all things being considered, the infinite time and choice vouchsafed by digital revolution has led to us exercising fewer choices? | Perhaps Elberse's theory, which owes nothing at all to the digital revolution, suggests the anointed few are getting smarter, and are hitting their channels more clinically than they used to. But down the tail lurks a much more interesting question: what happened? How was {{author|Chris Anderson}} so wrong? How is it that, all things being considered, the infinite time and choice vouchsafed by digital revolution has led to us exercising fewer choices? | ||