May 16, 2005
From the desk of Jane Galt:More trouble for the media
Box office sales are disappointing, possibly due to DVDs. That may cause studios to lower their advertising spending in newspapers, which has been one of the few bright spots for print media over the last few years.
Posted by Jane Galt at May 16, 2005 5:04 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksPerhaps people are fed up with outrageous ticket prices. There is a theater in my area that shows month- or months-old movies for $2, and as far as I'm concerned I can wait that long if the alternative is spending $8-10. I'm not an economist, but I'd be interested in an analysis of how the skyrocketing ticket prices have affected attendance.
Could be the Long Tail at work again, which means more people are discovering their favorite niches via Netflix, and fewer people are watching movies just because everybody else is watching it (with a few exceptions, like Natalie Portman's new film).
And this means fewer blockbuster hits. I suspect Hollywood is going to take a long time adjusting to this.
There was an article in Variety recently that suggested that box office was about what it was two years ago. Last year at this time was exceptional due to The Passion of the Christ. In a couple of weeks, I imagine Hollywood will be feeling the power of the Force (albeit the Dark Side).
A couple of random thoughts:
The lag time between release in the movie theater and when you can rent a movie has dropped to only several months. If you miss something on a big screen, you can watch it at home very soon.
Movies seem to be essentially through in a theater within a month now. There is a burst the first week or two, then a precipitous drop. Major advertising starts 2-3 months before a release in order to insure you see it the first week. If you don't make a movie in the first 4-6 weeks, chances are you can't.
Interesting tie-in between media revenues. They are more interrelated than we tend to think.
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