Interesting Confluence

Well, Blockbusters and Trade Wars is really interesting. But before I start quoting from that, I'd like to highlight this NYT article on the decline in movie attendance. (Login required.)

LOS ANGELES, May 9 - Now Hollywood is starting to get worried.

The poor box-office performance last weekend of the first major film of the summer, "Kingdom of Heaven," released by 20th Century Fox, made for 11 weeks in a row of declining movie attendance and revenue compared with last year, adding up to the longest slump since 2000 and raising an uncomfortable question: Are people turning away from lackluster movies, or turning their backs on the whole business of going to theaters?

Well, my bet for now is people are simply staying away from crappy movies - we'll see if things pick up after Star Wars. But I can also say that, personally speaking, I'm far more comfortable spending $15-20 on owning a DVD than on seeing it in the movie theatres. (This isn't exclusive - I'm usually buying movies I've already seen in the theatres.) I've got a limited amount of time and money, and I'd usually much prefer to spend it on a couch watching the DVD at home - where I can pause when I need to use the bathroom, after all - then going out. Obviously, for some movies there's the "experience" of moviegoing, like Star Wars, but these really are the minority.

But the other thing to remember is that, regardless of any decline in movie attendance, DVD sales continue to grow like kudzu. If anything, the profits on DVDs have got to be far, far higher than on new movies - so I'm not looking for the epitaphs on the big studios anytime soon.

Now, on to Blockbusters. The book deals primarily with the oddities of cultural economics - unlike other "normal" industries, once finished, a piece of "culture" has little cost in reproduction and distribution. This is why Canadian content is at a competitive disadvantage with American content, despite generous subsidies from the Federal and Provincial governments: the cost of producing US television, music, and films is amortized over 300 million consumers. After the initial costs are covered, the content is then sold around the world at a steep discount - and still makes a profit for the creator. It's way, way cheaper (think two orders of magnitude) for a Canadian network to simply buy US content than to create their own.

So when ever you hear someone complain - and you will - about Canadian "protectionism" or "paternalism" tell them that, if the CRTC didn't exist, we'd still have to create something like it, or else simply enjoy the situation that existed before the CBC was created. Back then, lots of Canadians were listening to the radio, but there was not a single Canadian broadcaster outside of the major cities - and more than half the country had nothing but American programming to listen to.

Don't think that's a problem? Think I'm just engaging in typical Canadian yank-bashing? Well, how about this, from Blockbusters and Trade Wars dealing with the American commercial need to "play in Peoria" (that is, not offend anybody) (p. 73)

...the actions of Time Warner's CNN in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks are illuminating on this point. The Atlanta-based news network prided itself on the number of its non-American correspondents, promoting the added authority they brought to coverage of world attitudes. But an Indian-bron producer who worked at CNN at the time recalled how a panel of American editors with no foreign experience vetted every correspondent's report before allowing it on the air. Reports deemed to demand too much knowledge of foreign affairs for U.S. viewers, or any that included "actuality" regarded as insufficiently "America-friendly", even items destined only for CNN's international broadcasts and never to be seen in Peoria were killed or sent back to be reworked.

So in the days following 9/11, when the US public needed informed journalism most of all, the only things that were allowed on CNN were things that were deemed sufficiently "America-friendly". Of course, we in Canada get the domestic version of CNN - apparently, Canada doesn't count as a foreign country. But we at least had the alternative of turning to our own domestic news sources. Without a strong government presence in the media, we wouldn't even have that.

This won't be the last post on this book, I'm sure.