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Technophiles who think that the Internet is going to topple Hollywood studios, TV networks, and cable companies have their heads up their asses. That's what the analysts at Bernstein Research say -- in more polite language, of course -- inside the 80-page transcript out today from their confab this past Monday called “Web Video… Friend or Foe And To Whom?” The answer, it seems, is that Big Media can put the brakes on progress long enough to figure out how they’ll get paid.
For example, Hollywood won’t give its best stuff to web video on demand services such as Apple or Amazon. Cable VOD pays the studios more. So they’ll also protect the premium network business because “getting a check every month from HBO or Starz or Showtime is a nice way to adjust your risk in every movie,” Bernstein’s programming analyst Michael Nathanson says. Cable operators will slow the migration to Web video by ditching the flat monthly Internet fee and charging people for how much they use. “Consumers would lose the economic incentive to undermine the old models,” Bernstein’s cable and telecom analyst Craig Moffett says.
Right now, the average American family spends about 35 cents per hour to watch TV. That would rise to “hundreds of dollars a month,” Moffett says, if families had to pay the prices that iTunes charges for each show. Meanwhile, the rush in media to put everything on the Web is subsiding. “A year and a half ago, everybody was talking about, what did we learn from music? And the lesson seems to be we've got to get out there quickly,” Moffett says. “Suddenly, in the last six months, the debate and the conversation has shifted to: what did we learn from newspapers? -- and God help us if we go down that same path. Let's not make those same mistakes.”
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And this is what all the SAG holdouts were fighting about? Someone should make this required reading for all the Membership First / Vote No people who made the rest of the industry sit on hold while they listened to themselves pontificate.
Thanks a bunch, guys!
I’m definitely holding back MY content from the web. Have you seen the contract we just approved? Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like it’s completely up to the production whether or not it wants to pay us at all. No thanks.
I’d agree with the report except that I thought ABC just joined Hulu. That doesn’t seem like shying away from the net at all.
But maybe they’ll only put some shows on there?
And once again, “The Internet” gets reduced to “Web Video.” There are some really great web video shows. And there were some really fun films that ran in nickelodeons in 1907.
But how long did that era last? And how quickly did the big fish Edison get driven out of the business.
Hey, dinosaurs! Here comes the comet.
I need a bit of education here – can someone comment exactly on the mistake of newspapers referenced? i am assuming this is referencing the weakness of ad buys in newspapers these days across the board which is crippling all newspapers.
but is this a result of most papers going digital or just that people dont buy newspapers like they used to because they opt for cnn or bbc on the web?
whatever the exact reason, for it seems to be a complex one, how does it directly relate to the future of new media – or the “mistakes” people in broadcasting are attempting to avert? it seems to be comparing apples and oranges to me. thoughts?
Agreed. Adopting the “everything is free on the Internet” model would be a diaster. John Malone was interviewed last month at the All Things D conference and touched on the challenges of trying to monetize content on the Internet. Barry Diller recently stated the Internet will start to transition away from the “free” model.
For premium content, either pay a fee or provide your consumer profile and agree to receive premium targeted ads base on your profile (which you can’t skip over – no complaints).
Come on, really? People who think this are idiots. If people really think producers are going to put great content online are delusional when they can make a lot more money on DVD, TV or Theatrical.
With all due respect to the analysts at Bernstein there’s already a bill introduced in the House on Tuesday by Rep Eric Massa (D-NY) H.R.2902 the Broadband Internet Fairness Act which you can read here
http://massa.house.gov/uploads/BroadbandInternetFairnessAct.pdf
which is taking aim at the cable companies for price gouging with bandwidth throttling or capping i.e. “charging users by how much they use” and otherwise forcing users to buy services they don’t want (overpriced and poorly serviced cable TV & satellite) to get the services they do want (content online) aka the much hyped “TV Everywhere” model.
The full press release for H.R. 2902 is here
http://massa.house.gov/?sectionid=24§iontree=23,24&itemid=316
Do the content making divisions of the same conglomerates want to see similar legislation introduced prohibiting them from gouging consumers on the supply side? Because we in the public can make that happen.
Sorry but with new legislators and a new administration looking into anti-trust issues in the tech industry, it wouldn’t be hard to convince them to have a closer look at the old school content providers while they’re at it.
Right. Hold back your content. Starve the consumer base. That won’t have an effect on piracy at all!
/sarcasm
Seriously, why is it so hard for these idiots to realize that the more open and honest they are with their consumers the more honest the transaction will be? Don’t claim that iTunes is the problem when the studios are the ones making the deals on the price (or in most cases wanted more), especially when most of these loons want to charge more for a digital download than the DVD release!
Put your content online immediately after the first airing for a fair price and you’ll be surprise how your consumer base responds.
Anyone thinking that people are going to pay EVEN MORE for TV than they already do is patently insane. Cable companies deliver, hands down, the most wretched quality relative to cost of almost any product I can think of. Satellite is better but they still play in proximity to the cost margins established by the cable companies. Things like FIOS are incredible but will be fought every step of the way by the established players and face a long road to achieve critical mass.
Toss in that these companies are also largely in bed with each other and control internet speed availability and costs (USA is nearly the worst in the civilized world) and it’s such a giant, cynical clusterfuck that it’s amazing we can even consider what options the future might hold.
I always felt that what this report is stating is pretty obvious and apprent to anyone trying to use the services it discusses. Online streaming is great but it’s still lightyears away from being as easy to use on a TV as it needs to be to get traction, nevermind the people that are content watching stuff on laptops and mobile devices. It is the future that’s already here…..on the other side of an impenetrable pane of glass.
Hi,
Analysts often have a reputation for talking absolutely ignorant twaddle from what people in an industry or normal people think.
In this case, the part of the equation that’s been forgotten is that, for content producers, it’s not a digital choice between Comcast and iTunes, but between paid and Bit-Torrent and Rapidshare and Joox.net et al for free and without compensation.
Paid offers virtue and better quality and access, unless it doesn’t, where most people will then be happy to give up their moral rectitude, Which is all the more easier when consumers feel they’ve already been screwed by the big corporations and held prisoner by them (in price and service) before they had these alternative choices.
The legacy distribution industries need to realise that those who work against their interests are far more clever, quicker, younger, popular, inventive and rarely do they do what they do for money. -So the only way to beat them would be to do so (at least partially) on their terms.
Kind regards,
Shakir Razak
Somebody finally had to say it; and it’s not just Hollywood. Most of us don’t put anything on the web that we’re not prepared to kiss goodbye.
Me thinks Hollywood is the one with its head up its ass. The Internet *will* topple the old models simply because of the natural rush towards “free content” that the new technologies allow. Itunes is the monster that the content creators acknowledge, but Limewire and others, which allow utopian-style free music/movies etc. that empower consumers … are the boogiemen who they should fear.
Content creators must devise new revenue models that work with the technologies, instead of trying to fight them. We can’t turn back time, or the hands of evolution.
These people are idiots. Oh yes we wouldn’t want to happen to newspapers happen to film? Duh
I don’t think inreasingly ecoconscious consumers with suddenly infinite news choices for free passing up overpriced news mags and paper subscriptions could have been avoided. Ever hear of the term technological advancement?
What do they think the next decade will look like? Ever hear of Moore’s law? It’s the reason it’ll take 5 seconds in ten years to dload a movie that will be untrackable and there will be a rush of indies – film will get it’s own long tail!
Iptv will make YouTube look like NBC in that no one will be watching it and instead of yr own webpage, fbook page you’ll have yr own digital channel
I’m not sure why these people are making such boldly dumb predictions based on nonsensical and false assumptions but I bet they got paid a lot for being so off base and won’t ever have to face any consequences for it
Where is this transcript and its 80 pages? Anyone have a link?
Wow. Talk about heads up asses. Someone needs to tell these folks about the pirate bay.
what did we learn from newspapers?
How to go out of business?
The good old days are gone – say what you will about the music industry, but the record labels aren’t going out of business, just having to adjust their ancient business practices to ensure their survivor.
Newspapers are a dead model…there is no newspaper thriving, they’re just waiting for the death toll to strike.
I think this is going to be a strong trend. Ultimately, premium content is just that – Premium. No reason to give it away for free. The buzz around content on the web is subsiding, and honestly, I know that I’d pay for HBO and I love my DirecTV. I feel I get good value out of them. And honestly, I wouldn’t want to watch the shows I get on my TV on my laptop. That being said, web video is for real. It’s just that different content will live there — some promotional, some viral home video, some professional short form – one thing is for sure that there will be eyeballs. In both places.
I’ll tell you what I learned from the music industry. Artists can sell their own album – online – themselves. The internet is a direct route from content creators to people. No bankers in suits needed.
If I were the studios, with the way I’ve been treating creatives for what, 80 years now? I’d be very afraid.
“New Report Says Hollywood Is Holding Back Its Best Content From The Web”
I can only assume they are holding it back from cinema screens as well.
This is the new normal, so I read, so I see, and so I’m told. Wonder why Dule’ Hill was so UFS? Watch this. This is he and his co-star from the USA series, “Psych,” in character, shilling for Kia. It makes it seem to the watchers of this USA series “Psych” that they haven’t even left the show. Now, I know we’re all whores, on some level, and I know all of us reading this and watching this, if WE were one of the leads on “Psych” and the producers said “hey buddy, here’s a little spot we’re going to have you and Dule’ doing in character for Kia” that, in all honesty, we might just say “whatever you say boss.” Let’s acknowledge we all have our levels of whore-ish-ness. And it’s not like “Psych” is Chekov.
However, IF you were wondering what it’s actually going too look like, doing ads in character for products, this is it. I assume MAYBE cause they’re the leads, they get some green for this? MAYBE? But here’s the leads of a series doing a straight up-commercial endorsement, in character, as if they’re in the show. So, since neither of these dudes are exactly house-hold names, at the very least it means they aint doin any car commercials. Kia is now, officially, a conflict.
Just worth a look. whadd’ya think?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M395jAlys2A&feature=player-embedded
Hollywood can’t “hold back” any content from the web. The only thing that’s saved the copyright industries thus far is that 90% of their consumers haven’t yet figured out BitTorrent.
Thus, “[putting] the brakes on progress long enough to figure out how they’ll get paid” basically means pressuring gov’ts and ISPs to encrypt and throttle bandwidth in order to maintain the status quo (i.e., making sure we pony up $10 or so for that copy of Land of the Lost). Yeah, good luck with that.
The first big-enough-pocket firm to leave the smoke-filled room, forego the analog nostalgia and figure out how to deliver desirable, high-quality content online at a now-realistic price point (NB – it ain’t $10 a pop) will win the first half of the century. Hands down. Every other old media firm will deserve their fate.
Two in a row, so perhaps no play, but I’ll try: I am 48. I LOVE using my computer. I have “visited” Pirate Bay, just to check it out. Also, Limewire. They are both an ENORMOUS pain in the ass, at least on a Mac. Maybe that’s all it is, but, as to mass piracy via these sites? I guess there’s an awful lot of intensely patient 17 year old tech geeks doing this for free, cause I sure as hell aint. I’m at the age where the law actually means something to me, and it a HUGE pain in the ass. I already said that. It bears repeating.
I honestly don’t know where it’s going. Truth is – no one does. Whatever 30 year old or 25 year old who wrote the post(s) above doesn’t either, despite the bravado. If they did, they’d be pulling down half a million a year at some firm instead of typing from their Mom’s house. O.K., maybe their apartment. That they share with 4 other dudes. Been there.
Look, the comparables are out there, if you care to think outside the box:
The West. People did WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY WANTED. Until, of course, they couldn’t. Then, they didn’t. Cause there were cops and shit.
Piracy and “I can bounce a stolen signal off my left nut and watch ‘The Simpson’s’ for free – you people are dinosaurs?”
Same thing. All the tech geeks, especially the young ones, think they’re SO clever. But they’re not. The two dudes from Pirate Bay just had their appeal turned down, and guess what? They’re going to fucking jail. And when they come out? They’re going to hide under their bed covers for the rest of their lives.
There will be consequences, and all the “wild west – you just don’t get it old people” rhetoric will turn into “yes officer” as soon as the cyber-cops show up. And they’re coming, Junior. There’s billions of dollars at stake. These people may be dumb, but they’re not stupid. You should be trying to get into the anti-piracy business. That’s where you can MAKE a lot of money by being your clever selves.
Rubbish, the music industry made the same mistake. Of course you can hold back licenses on your best content for legal services that exist. If the studios or networks think that they can put the breaks on piracy and therefore consumer habits to consume what they want when they want they have another thing coming.
That’s like an oxy-moron. There is no such thing as “good” content in regards to tv shows. People act like our lives revolve around this crap and it doesn’t. If it does, you should go get a mental evaluation immediately.
RECALL BARBARA BOXER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Matt,
Some of us wholly believe in Copyright-protection and the prerogative of IP-owners to control how their content is distributed or monetised!
However, to deny reality and the threats faced by profit-driven enterprises is not pragmatic.
For your information, even while the case is unfolding for the Pirate Bay guys (definitely not idealistic people), they’re still managing to launch a VPN service that will encrypt data and identity; then the other thing to consider about the bottle-necks is that everything is becoming a dumb pipe, and if the cable companies are self-servingly slow, the wireless networks or zigbee-type services or new competitors will happily challenge the incumbents.
As iTunes has partly shown, the opportunity and choice is to provide a decent legal alternative option for content-consumers to accessing their content versus what the freetards offer.
Kind regards,
Shakir Razak
@ Mulhern:
Love ya, buddy, but you’re wrong. Piracy is still rampant, and it’s not going anywhere.
I would like to read the transcript prior to commenting but can’t seem to source it anywhere for free (ah, the freemium model), so…
Having worked for a major VOD company where I acquired studio films and television series for distribution, I can tell you that the statement that the studios are holding back their best stuff is total BS.
The content owners place their content where they can generate the most $$$, period. (The article even points out that the cable VOD pays the studios more.) It’s not a conspiracy, it’s bottom line.
For instance, many of the studios have major long term deals with HBO that generate significant revenue but create window issues for VOD distributors: a maximum 24 hr rental period, blackout dates, etc. As those deals end and/or become less lucrative, many of those issues will go away.
Another “holdback” problem can occur when the studio producing a television series and the network airing the series aren’t owned by the same company. (E.g. Warner Bros. TV produces the show for the Fox network and the two parties can’t agree on digital distribution rights.) This can result in a VOD carriage delay, but it’s not a concerted effort to deny digital distribution.
Finally, the free digital distribution of films/shows on sites like Hulu or the new, improved YouTube may be constrained in the short run by the simple fact that they generate less $/viewer via ad sales.
I read somewhere that the average network show currently generates $0.60/viewer in value verses $0.18/viewer on Hulu. Coupled with the decline in DVD revenues, this appears to be raising concerns for some of the content owners (specifically for license-fee challenged cable series) that multi-episode distribution on Hulu may be negatively impacting the bottom line on their shows.
Premium content will continue to follow the $$$, with the studios hoping that the overall revenue pie will grow as the consumers’ ability to get the content they want where they want it increases. If the pie doesn’t grow, production budgets will have to decrease accordingly. The studios have a huge incentive to have the digital distribution business model work.
@Matt –
I’m heartened by your faith in “the law.” And, at 40, amused by your “I’m old, the internet CONFUSES me” shtick, and tired cliches of geeks. Neither of those strategies, however, can save the industry as it would like to function.
Nothing short of mandatory sentencing and (better yet) a deliberate plunge back to the dial-up days will stop piracy. Smarter folks in the industry have learned to live with it, and started to figure out viable alternatives. Free streaming content seemed like the right idea at the time, but it was premised way too much on old ad-revenue expectations. These expectations will have to change, as will the entire economic infrastructure of the industry, in order for it to survive. Same goes for VOD or subscription models. Optimal price points aren’t there yet, but the will be.
Again, this *will* happen. It’s happened before, many times, despite perennial bravado about The Way Things Have Always Been Done:
(e.g., I wonder what happened to that Mark Burnett guy who wanted to do a show with a bunch of no-names running around on an island somewhere? Or those British guys with the talent show idea? TV is a scripted medium; this “reality” stuff will never draw an audience.)
(e.g., Remember that invention that recorded TV and played it back? And that even played back films on tape? I can’t believe people thought that would ever work, or change the industry!)
(e.g., Sure, let Lucy and Desi have the film rights. Who’s ever going to want to watch I Love Lucy again after it airs? They think they’ll make money off these “reruns”?!?)
Etc.
Derek and Shakir
I’m assuming you’re not actors. Maybe you are. But Derek, the “reality TV” and “owning the rights Desi” and “VHS player analogies” aren’t really relevant to my overall point, which is, none of those things threatened – even VHS – the MEANS of distribution, and the sole concern here from me is for SAG actors who just made a hugely uniformed decision by not fighting for a piece of the pie.
The consensus I’m getting from “experts” I’ve been consulting is all over the map in all honesty, because no one really knows. No one knows if they’ll get a workable handle on Piracy, how quickly, no one really knows how to monetize the internet, no one really knows if actors swimming away from the conglomerate Titanics (as one expert put it) and doing their own thing will make any money owning their own stuff and trying to distribute it, in short – no one knows.
One thing you can be sure of: entertainment is one of our BIGGEST exports, and the government, Democrat or Republican, is at least going to understand that it needs to either help or get the fuck out of the way. There’s WAY too much money at stake, and the center of the entertainment industry is still Hollywood. There simply isn’t the talent pool, the technical infrastructure, the business people, the agents and managers, anywhere else – nowhere APPROACHING the level of these tens of thousands of people who ALL live in L.A. and aint moving anywhere.
So, what everybody is wildly thrashing around trying to figure out? How do we max out the return on our product? We cut WAY down on piracy, which is doable, tough but imminently doable. The people who say it’s not simply can’t imagine that one day they’ll try to download that new movie and either not be able to, or get a knock on the door in 48 hours. It’s coming, and the Pirate Bay may still be up, but those two dudes going to jail is the real deal, and it in and of itself, going to dissuade a LOT of mooks from their little or big rip-off operations. If those guys can go down – ANYONE can go down.
No, the only real interest here was “whatever happens, we get a fair slice of the pie,” and SAG didn’t, and it will turn into diminishing returns – it already is – for the actor, because the “moderates” didn’t have the foresight or the knowledge to identify the threat of this contract for what it was, and now SAG is behind the 8 ball – IN WRITING – and getting out from behind there is going to be a holy fucking bitch – you watch.
Actors going solo? I know personally singer/songwriters, doing their “own thing.” Incredibly talented people, who maybe had a mainstream deal, but weren’t delivering the “units” to justify the labels contract, so, they make their own CD’s in their own, or friends studios, for the love of what they do, they have their own web-sites, they sell direct, and they DON’T make that much money and they spend their ENTIRE LIVES on the road, touring. It is WORK for NOT big money.
Same for comedians. If they aint on a sit-com, or starring in Hollywood movies, they’re on the road, and unless they are a BIG name, they are NOT making much money.
Indie filmmakers? I’ve done it – twice. I broke even, and consider that an accomplishment. Quick – who won Sundance this year? Me neither, I forget. And I was there in ‘05. And I got a domestic release and 6 or 7 deals for foreign, DVD, cable, pay TV, etc. Broke even.
Eight years of my life – good film, lots of lucky breaks… broke even.
And if a “BIG” swoops in and wants to buy you? The money is going to THEM, not you. Not really. When you push for a direct tie in as a producer in the early stages, the money producers say – “hey, great script, later man.” they have NO INTENTION of allowing indie people to profit. None. Think John Sayles is “rich?”
Nope. It’s only the ones who transition to making Hollywood crap that THEN get a decent paycheck, but what comes with that loss of control is mind warping, and most people with an indie sensibility – I want to do my OWN thing – will be outta there, voluntarily or by getting fired.
The push and the infrastructure of the REAL backers is what gets to mass sales, and I say this as someone who has a website and has all my product available:
http://www.mattmulhern.webs.com
The good news? Ever done manual labor? I have.
The studios are idiots, predictably.
The music business got hammered by producing little new, exciting, original music that people would pay for, and suffered a demographic collapse of lack of young (White) people. The young people who were being born were Mexican/Hispanic and preferred Spanish-language/culture music. Hence pirating, since music labels did not produce VALUE that people would pay for. Britney and Timberlake were not the stuff of a musical dynasty.
Newspapers turned away half their readership or more, living in a older. liberal bubble, alienating core older conservative readers and failing to get new younger liberal ones (fewer younger people than older ones — that’s the iron law of the birth dearth folks). And were failing BEFORE the internet and challenges to classifieds (Craigslist), internet advertising generally, and the “giving away content for free.”
Here’s the thing — Hollywood has NO PREMIUM CONTENT. They’re not Rolls Royce, able to charge premium prices against no competition. There’s tons of free or nearly free (low cost) entertainment out there, all of it substitutable for each other, and nothing that is compelling. Hollywood year over year, suffers ticket number sales and TV viewer declines. Because they don’t make compelling product. In 1968, with 100 million fewer people, the “Beverly Hillbillies” did 60 million viewers. Only the Superbowl, with 90-100 million viewers, comes close to adjust for the population increase.
The winner will be some independent, probably non-US production company, that puts up compelling, broadly attractive content, on the Web for free, and sells ads against it, or charges minimal prices. With a far lower cost structure, open honest accounting (to lower up front salary costs), and far greater ability to execute quickly, from concept to production in weeks not months.
The reality of the Web is that it allows distribution of movies/serials with very little up-front capital costs. It allows competitors to studios to reach American (and other) audiences with broadly appealing products, instead of niche stuff relying on expensive marketing campaigns to stir up target demos.
If you are a consumer, would you rather see a broadly appealing, well-executed, comedy or drama on your computer for free or say $1 on your own time and schedule, vs. “Biggest Loser” or “Celebrity Genealogy?” Particularly if the “brand” of the studio is one you know and trust (that produces quality entertainment that you value?)
Using Bit Torrent is no longer a pain in the ass. It used to be, but then the “Transmission” app came out. All of the annoying, difficult, time-consuming hacking of modems that went on before –problem now solved! A grandmother could set it up and use it within five minutes *without any help* from a tech savvy teen. It’s as easy to use as Google with a single extra step. And it takes about 6 minutes to download a TV show with enough active seeders. No patience is required anymore. (Par example, about one hour after the BBC airs a new Doctor Who episode, there are about 40,000 people *already* seeding it)
Furthermore, you are not required to watch on your laptop! You can attach your laptop to your TV with a $30 cable or you can burn raw video files to a DVD and play them on your TV that way. They look as good as a store bought DVD or just slightly worse. The Phillips DVP 5960 will play anything you throw at it. $50 at Wal-Mart and WAAAAY better than my high end $550 Sony DVD player that I bought in 2002.
You need to fully explore the piracy culture to make statements like yours. Saying you dipped your toe in the water once is quite a bit different from learning to swim. But at least you checked it out. Most of the power elite of Hollywood have NO CLUE how much of it (digital piracy) is going on and the MPAA is so totally clueless that it is laughable? Dogs sniffing out bootleg DVDs? Puh-leeze! Digital information on the Internet has no smell. Going after bootleggers is like swatting at flies. Physical distribution is nearly irrelevant in a discussion of piracy. Very 2004, let’s just say.
I used to own a DVD distribution company. When I realized how easy it was to pirate the very things my company sold, I got out of the business while there was still a bag left to let *someone else hold*!
The “single sale” business model is kaput moving forward. Hollywood types rail against this, but so far no one has come up with a better model than Netflix has, with their streaming on demand service. They’re doing something PROACTIVE to retain –and even grow– their customer base. Catalog movies need to be sold like pens or Twizzlers at Staples. As Amazon kind of proved, you only need one really good source for things and Netflix, with their “all you can watch” subscription model work pretty well. It would be difficult for another company to compete with them (anyone remember how Blockbuster was going to take them on?)
And to the guy who thinks the music industry will survive, you hasn’t used Spotify yet. Sign up for it via a proxy server (not available in the US) and use it for but a single day –it’ll blow your mind (picture iTunes, but it’s all free, streaming and sounds a lot better. It behaves *exactly* like iTunes). Now tell me how they’re ever going to monetize music in the future when something like that exists??
Music is now the loss leader, it’s free, this is why Irving Azoff is so smart, he knows the real action –the ONLY action left in the music business –is live concert experiences that can’t be downloaded.
@ Mulhern:
You don’t seem to understand one factor — there will always be smarter hackers and pirates than any corporate lockout attempts. Always have been, always will be.
I’m not saying that’s a good thing. I am saying it’s head-in-the-sand ostrichism to pretend otherwise.
Have you ever created anything? Found something that you actually like to do? Or maybe you slave away at a money-making endeavor that you hate, then go to the cinema on weekends, hoping to experience something that will make your dreary life seem a bit less dreary. And maybe you can, somehow, get this experience for free. Because, after all, you just spent the week doing something you don’t really like to earn your money. Why give it to the assholes who make your entertainment? They don’t do a damned thing and get paid millions for it. Fuck them. But you still want their entertainment. So, you go to the cinema – And you’re disappointed every time – “I just gave you money, fuckwad. Why isn’t my life any better?”
You probably have some version of “The Perfect Movie” in your head. I would suggest that you go, right now, and make it. Because it’s good. It’s the best movie ever. You can probably scrounge up a camera someplace. And you can probably find a person or two to stand in front of it. Or maybe it’s just you. So, do that. Stand in front of your camera and do “The Perfect Movie”. Then store it someplace. Maybe no one but you ever sees it. But you can watch it whenever you want. For free. It might even have transformed your dreary life. Just the way you wanted. It’s the entertainment you were looking for all along. If such is the case, then – Well Done!
You created something that bypassed the Hollywood Assholes, satisfied your need for entertainment, and it probably cost you next to nothing.
As it should be.
holdingback their best content? What possiple motive does that serve? It’s like the RIAA sueing downloaders on music where some muscians have freely used the net to promote thier properties. Frankly this is a loser game for for the studioss. What is their best content? Are they afraid of the internet market infringing on thier royalities? Has anyone been following Iran and how the best of Youtube and Twitter has becomee a news outlet for the sat and cable news outlets?
The real issue is not what the industry WANTS to put online, its what can they do to stop consumers from putting what they want online.
The industry is in a fantasy land if it thinks it can control content dissemination on the Internet. If it is digital, it WILL find its way on the Internet, and it will be free.
Dr. Strangelove
Luzid
I’m glad we’ve been, basically, on the same page, but, wow, you seem awful “invested” in there being no solution to piracy. Hmmm…
I totally disagree. I think it’s a REAL slow transition, and I think there will ALWAYS be some geek one step ahead. But, I’m telling you, the entertainment industry knows one thing: piracy is a threat to their entire industry. They know they’ve lost billions. And they’re fucking pissed. And if you were an actor, who’d be getting residuals on all that stolen product? You’d be pissed.
The reality is they are going to HAVE to create anti-piracy units with people like… You?
And those people WILL come because what they’re making will exponentially dwarf what they were making pirating.
I mean, what, in the end, are you arguing? It’s weird – drug smugglers will ALWAYS be one step ahead, so, don’t be a fool and try to cut off heroin getting into the country that makes people zombies, and then, often, dead? Don’t chase bank robbers who just fleeced the local bank which has your accounts, cause they’ll ALWAYS figure out a way to beat the security?
It’s kind of an unsettling rallying cry, when you think about it, and no, I don’t agree “they’re” all that clever. They just haven’t been pursued NEARLY aggressively enough. It’s NOT rocket science. You track the fuckers down, and you indict them, just like any other crime. For every “untouchable” hacker, there’s a “toucher” out there. They just need to be be hired and well-paid.
You Luzid – whatever you do – say YOU make a movie, you write and direct one, and you put, oh say, eight years of your life into it, and it actually turns out pretty good, and you get some HUGE breaks and it gets picked up by Fox Searchlight, and then some fucking prick at the post-house in England, where they’re cutting it, cause it’s cheaper there, sends the nearly complete file to someone, who pays him, I don’t know, let’s say 10 grand?
And YOU are fucked out of, oh, half your back end, cause WOW! – they’re actually IS a back-end, despite the piracy? So, you’re out, say 500 grand. I don’t think you’d be so glib. My sense, if you know what you SEEM to know, is you’d track down the MF-er yourself and stab him in the neck. You would NOT say “oh, well, what’s 500k – they’ll ALWAYS be one step ahead.” It’s not that simple.
@ Mulhern:
Wow. Way to cast aspersions just because I disagree with your analysis. You should be more interested in attacking my argument than my person.
Bringing up the heroin angle is perfect, because as we all know the War on (some) Drugs is an utter failure. Smart countries use harm reduction policies that produce actual results — much like iTunes gave many Napster users a reason to get the music they wanted, and only the music they wanted, for a reasonable price.
I of course agree that piracy is a danger to the industry. One would have to be completely out to lunch not to know that. But that doesn’t mean you can assume that it’s going to disappear. It won’t, for the simple reason that people will always want free content. The genie’s out of the bottle, so how do you put it back in? There are too many brilling-with-a-computer 14-year-olds out there, and not enough law enforcement in the world to track them all down. Personally, I think the answer is to make content more affordable (especially in this economy) and easily accessible, both of which mean digital distribution… and we both know actors and writers just got fucked on that end.
The RIAA suing grandmothers and tweens for insane amounts of money still hasn’t stopped people from downloading music. I think it’s short-sighted to assert that the Pirate Bay case, for example, will deter much piracy. I mean, damn, people get the electric chair for murder, but it’s not like murders don’t happen anymore.
“But that doesn’t mean you can assume that it’s going to disappear.”
I never said I expect it do disappear, I just am beginning to wonder if the whole new media freak out over the contract we just signed, is beginning to be counter-balanced by the obvious reality that they don’t seem to have been HIDING anything, as in “as SOON as they sign – OUT comes the business model where we screw actors!”
What I’m seeing is – they still have NO IDEA what to do with the net. What I’m seeing is, they are NOT breaking even or making money on move-over, and they KNOW it. What I’m seeing is maybe this 15k space is going to produce a ton of awful nonunion garbage that nobody ever sees, let alone buys.
If by move-over, they decided to take a short-term financial hit to “push eyeballs to the web” THEN – FIGURE out how to max out profit on those eyeballs – it’s NOT making them money, and I don’t see HOW IT WILL. In fact, my guess is they’re LOSING money and they all have different ideas, there’s NO consensus, and, maybe, JUST maybe, the fact that what we SEEM to be seeing, post-signing of the contract, is – they DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING.
If they did, wouldn’t we have SOME awareness of the “plan” by now? So, if move-over, showing shows for FREE 24/7/365 to the consumer, is NOT making comparable money to the traditional model, and in fact, is losing them money – do YOU think Hulu is paying the nets license fees and making enough ad dollars for the nets to come even CLOSE to what the nets WERE making with traditional reruns? I don’t. How?
And if original content turns out to be a bunch of unwatchable nonunion crap, WHO pays for it, and WHO buys it, and how many PROS are going to waste their time doing nonunion stuff, trying to run under the radar, for what, $200 a day?
In all seriousness, I’m just beginning to wonder, and I could be dead wrong, that “they” have about as much idea as you and me, how to “monetize the internet.” I’m beginning to think the public will NOT be running out to buy devices which turn their TV’s into computers, cause they already HAVE a computer, and they like their computer just fine, and they turn that OFF when they want to watch TV.
Kids are on-line in increasingly huge numbers vs. TV? O.K. – great. Are they PAYING for anything? Nope. WILL they pay for anything if the nets and studios start charging, instead of being able to find “The Dark Knight” for free, and the whole season of “Fringe” on Hulu for free? Nope. Once it costs? They’re gone.
So, I’m just beginning to wonder if the AMPTP put together this package of crap, in an effort – IN CASE they got a handle on it, to cut us out. But, since it’s been over a year, and now they HAVE us in writing? All I keep reading is “Uh… we don’t have a business model yet.”
Are you hearing any different?
First of all – man up – no aspersions cast here. I don’t know if you’re an actor, but you’ve come out with some very glib statements about piracy, ‘they’re smarter, it’s a lost cause, etc.”
Piracy is the greatest threat to the industry, and they have to do a MUCH better job and put MUCH more resources into tracking it down. That’s all I’m saying. Cause, again, if you’re an actor? That’s YOUR money they’re stealing.