...

Though personally I'm not sure present-day Hollywood has what it needs to face the challenge of re-inventing its business model. It barely manages to offer enough truly innovative, original and high quality content, such as it is. It's answer nowadays is to put more and more money in productions to make the poverty of the storytelling or acting and such acceptable to audiences. It's a terrible or very predictable movie with average if overpaid performances, but it featured enough "entertainment", exciting scenes or visually stunning moments to get audiences to pay to watch.

It seems all geared on finding ways (which for now seem doomed to fail, like these anti-piracy ventures) to salvage it's 20th century near monopoly and its old ways of doing things (which include overproducing massively, in order to saturate the market worldwide), down to finding new ways to increase its revenues by raising rather than lowering its prices. Right now, they're still caught in the inflationist spiral, from putting more and more money into productions to trying to charge more to the consummers as a way to fight not only or primarly piracy, but the decline of attendance at theaters. Once, they blamed VCR and rental for this (and did try to have legislation address this problem, much the same way they attempt to have legislation fight piracy now) and it took them quite a while, too long (it got them very rough years in the interim), to understand they needed to make the movies available to this new home market (at about a fifth of the price they charge for a rental copy). That they have decided to put them on sale at the same time rentals becomes available owes a lot to the fact they originally didn't believe this market was viable and that people started building personal collections took them by surprise. Otherwise, their greed might have tempted them to release consummer copies months later than rental (though maybe not... they never saw rental so positively, more like something they suspected was a cause of declining attendance to theaters). Now they seem blind to the notion that for a lot of people, the matter is that they don't want to attend movies at theaters and prefer the new ways of enjoying cinema at home, even at the expense of technical quality at times (though the lack of noise, distractions and those fumes from awful American fast-food is more than a compensation for the loss of screen size or audio quality, to many people!). They might remain blind to this until it's too late to recover the lost ground and their industry goes in decline (some argue it's already been in decline for decades, actually, rebounding for a while than starting to lose ground again. Comparisons to the automobile industry has been made long before the automobile industry had its huge crisis. Producing movies/TV in the US has become insanely expensive, and the industry has a great deal of structural problems).



Right now, they still try to "punish" this home market by selling them massively overpriced physical copies that are available months after the theatrical runs (months after pirated sources have appeared, thus). That they are overpriced is terribly obvious when living abroad (where you can compare...) where local productions (TV series, for e.g.) manage to sell their boxsets for the same price, or lower, than Hollywood's, even though they can hope to sell thousands, or a few tens of thousand, where Hollywood will sell hundreds of thousand, or millions of each title worlwide. Granted, American series can easily be 10 or 20 times (occasionally much more) as expensive to produce, but that still doesn't justify the similar pricing. Granted, the system for music rights is in itself insane and actually make the release of some series or movies on DVD/BR non viable, but that's still doesn't justify the average price. It's all like this on the US market. Pictures of works of art owned by US great museums don't show up much in books and TV shows, because the museums are too greedy when it comes to reproduction rights. Doc series about Art are insanely expensive as a result (it's in the order of 10 to 20,000$ per painting for shows broadcast in the US, far more than this if you want a DVD release), unless they're coproduced with museums/copyright owners. The most absurd case I'm personally aware of recently involved a TV show that interviews writers and that is broadcast in the US. One week, there was this prominent figure in economy interviewed about his book. The producer contacted the publisher to get HD files of the book cover and the cover picture. They got referred to the photographer for the picture, and she wanted to charge them 5000$/three broadcastfor the rights, or 15000$ for unlimited US broadcast, or 30 000$ for worldwide (which is more than an episode of the show costs!)... for a photograph of the author already on a book cover, which you can show on cam, or rip a JPG out of Amazon. Needless to say, the show ended showing the physical book and zooming on the photograph, and screw the greedy photographer Thankfully, when the show interviewed the far more high profile Leibowitz and other photographers, they all graciously provided visuals, for free. Another example involves the MPPA and its legendary greed. The show had some guy who had worked in many movies and once won an oscar. The producer wanted a few set photographs and contacted the studio. Again, the price for the rights were in the 25 000 $ area, for a bunch of set photos of movies! The show ended up using the personal photographs of the guest, even though they were bad, and a couple of free of rights promo pictures.

Back to the point, what Hollywood offers for digital/internet consumption is even more overpriced than DVD/BR. HBO attempts to make you pay to download and watch one of its series more than it costs to actually get the service to see not only the whole series but all of HBO programming for the duration of the series. ABC charges 3.50$ on i-tune to watch a single episode of Alcatraz, which was broadcast for free! That's ridiculous. For the price of a few episodes only, I could get cable and watch all their programming from Canada (and all American Network TV, and quite a few cable-only stations like Fox as part of the basic plan) and even digitally record Alcatraz if I wanted to keep it for rewatch later... Heck, they're so greedy and unwise they don't even offer the pilot episode for free in the hope of hooking customers to it... Dinosaurs...


Meanwhile, it's not only pirates who have invaded this market Hollywood fails to serve properly, or shamelessly tries to rip-off, but leading broadcasters worlwide who are trying to find innovative, inventive ways to distribute their content (in part to fight piracy, in a larger part to develop new markets where Hollywood/American TV isn't much yet), and already they are looking for ways to get around or get rid of the outdated system of foreign rights and so on, so they could distribute those works globally, without having to restrict screening to their territory. BBC has an excellent service that lets anyone in or out of the UK watch not only most of its new current shows but a massive amount of material from its archives for a mere 8,99$/month. At that price, why even bother to download any BBC show illegally? Do BBC fear this could cripple its foreign branches, its foreign sales, or mark a decline in its sales of DVD/BR? Apparently not, or they have realized like many non-American broadcasters/content producers, that these markets are doomed in the long (and perhaps not so long) run, and what they must do now is position themselves for the next phase. It's sad to see that some of the best content producers worlwide (I'm thinking again of HBO, for example) still fail to rethink the their business and join this bandwagon. Don't they understand that after so many years of piling up DVD/BR (and after getting rid of so many VHS we had paid so much to buy...) a great deal of people are gladly looking for the day where we could have a movie/TV library without cluttering our homes so much, that we can bring with US on portable devices now it's perfectly possible to watch a TV show while commuting and so on? But no... that service is unavailable, and if I wanted to do anything close to that, I must buy overpriced files for each episode/season of a series. What is HBO waiting for to expand worlwide, and offer its programming both completely and à la carte for prices as reasonnable as they charge mensually to Americans? Why can't we still get a full subscription to HBO on IPAD, computers and so on for the same price we pay the cable companies? Why wouldn't we get the possibility to save for free shows we want to see again later, when if you suscribe to the cable service nothing stops you for doing it in perfect legality? But no, like nearly all American corporations (and most worlwide, for the time being) they're still stuck to their outdated vision and models, where instead of making any individual a direct consummer of their products, they aim to eat from each and every available bowl around... from subscribers in the US (or via advertising, for networks), then from sales to foreign broadcasters, and then and only then from the physical/digital home market). They don't seem to realize that many of those foreign broadcasters are less and less interested in buying foreign productions and looking more and more into ways to distribute theirs worlwide on the new markets. The days are close were a broadcaster is primarly a content producer/distributor, not a redistributor of foreign productions in order to fill its grid and get more revenues from advertising. The days are coming, or should be coming, where most American content producers will have no choice but to distribute their products to consummers worlwide themselves, and make foreign versions available (they already pay for those, it's deducted from a series's sale price to a foreign distributor). There are signs from some this might be coming, or that they are preparing for this, but it should already be here, really.

When I was a kid, dubbed American shows were all over the place, even dominating some local channels. Currently, they've all but vanished and only a few very high profile shows are bought by our networks (the specialized channels buy more) and they're often rather the cable shows from HBO/Showtime/Fox and co then the network shows, and they're looking more and more at high quality non-American shows when it comes to foreign purchases. We used to get US sitcoms (they're all gone now), now we get British comedy, French historical series and so on. As for day when the internet will be their primary source of income and their main mean of broadcasting, they're already more than preparing for it. The main public network is not only offering most of its programming online for free (with advertising), but it's already launched several very succesful internet-only series in the usual and in innovative formats, it's making deals with local competitors to offer their stuff as well on its site, and making deals with foreign content producers (incl. BCC, French production companies etc.) to have their content available as well. They're one of those like the BCC trying to find ways so none of its content would have to be restrained to the Canadian territory only because of rights.

What you won't find a single episode of there is American TV shows broadcast by them network (I'm not too sure which they still have aside from Desperate Housewives, actually). They either refused, or tried to charge the SRC/CBC simply outrageous extra fees to allow it. The english-speaking networks usually have a big catalogue of episodes online if the series's Canadian, but for American shows they are restriced to the last three episodes, if even that (several high profiles shows are still not available at all). Francophones here watch most of their American TV (and it remains a lot) on DVD/BR nowadays (what they don't watch on cable, anyway), but people are getting tired of piling all those boxsets at home, especially when non-American content producers are offering more and more non-physical alternatives...


The way things are going, it would be daring to predict Hollywood/America will still be the #1 producer of movies and TV worlwide a hundred years from now. Even known, its enduring supremacy owe quite a bit to the past, for instance the ways it has managed through the 20th century to dominate and saturate the end distribution system, getting rid of the competition in a large part by limiting its access to consummers. Only a few nations have managed to preserve a commercial cinema industry alive. In most, Hollywood made it difficult for those movies to get enough screens to make much money, and they're in a vicious circle: not much BO money means commercial movies don't have the financial means to make commercial productions that can compete with Hollywood's and governments tend to finance mostly artistic, auteur cinema, and even corporations tend to prefer those as well, for the social visibility, because as pure investements to generate money, commercial movies aren't interesting. Production companies never manage to build corporations that can finance very expensive productions, never develop the means to launch them on the world stage, nor fight Hollywood dollar for dollar. Until recently (last ten years), Hollywood also managed almost exclusively to attract the biggest talents in the field (as Hollywood hardly works on American talent alone, it has international staff at nearly every level and in every specialities.) That's still ongoing, and will for a foreseeable future, I think, but more and more interesting options are emerging for talented people, in Europe, NZ, the Middle-East and most of all Japan, India and Asia in general (the attraction of HK has somewhat declined since reunification), without all the drawbacks of quality of life in and around LA, which puts off a lot of talented people I know (despite the lavish treatments American companies offer foreigners they wish to come work for them... from speedtracked Green Card to fully paid moving to free houses and job offerings for family members. Nowadays, several other markets offer the same or more, or much better environment or quality of life, and their productions are often as interesting to work on. More and more people choose to make their career at home too. The price of technology used to make this affordable only to US companies, mostly, but it's less and less true. Rather, what is beginning to happen is that non-American companies are not only able to compete in quality with the big American companies, but their services are much, much cheaper for the same quality (and the excuse of "cheap labor" just isn't there. It's the US companies that are overpriced) Nowadays, you see, say, Brazilian or Argentian movies or shows come to Canadian companies for VFX or post-production services, European film companies going to NZ or Australia. Canadian companies will go to the UK or France, and so on. Years ago, Scorcese would have brought a colour timer to NY or LA if he wanted to work with a foreigner, nowadays he works long distance with the guy in Montreal.

What happens less and less, but that used to be widespread, is turning to Hollywood or NY for services (the biggest post-production company is not even American anymore, its biggest facilities are in NY and LA where they also bought some leading American companies that struggled in the 90s, but the company is French/British, with its HQ in Europe.

Even several smaller budget American productions are looking for services abroad, more and more. It's more than just the content producers in Hollywood that are having problems, and the problems are much wider and deeper than strictly "piracy is causing us big losses" (which is stupidly calculated on the basis that each download = an actual loss, as if each download would have been an actual sale otherwise...).

Ironically there was a study published last week. It wasn't only concerned with movies, but it suggests strongly what many of the more innovative content producers have long believed, that free available content and even to an extent illegal downloads may actually increase sales more than it generate losses. When it causes losses, it's generally because there's an availability problem (hello Hollywood!), a pricing problem (again!) or a quality problem (again, thanks to overproducing there's a small percentage of really terrific and average movies among a sea of mediocre productions, but the insane revenues generated by the successes mean Hollywood can afford to overproduce and saturate the theater networks, leaving no space to competitors). A lot of people apparently use illegal downloads (which are easy, but still a bother, beside the moral aspects) as a modern version of window shopping or a mean quality control, before making the decision to buy the product or not (with music, that allows people to pick and choose songs, a phenomenon the music industry has caught on and answered accordingly by making it possible to shop for music this way, while musicians in the genres most touched by the phenomenon have started an envision "an album" more like a collection of single-worthy material). So not only Hollywood would have to remove all those downloads that would not have been sales anyway (most of them, most people but the MPAA believe), but they would also have to remove all those downloads that resulted in sales of DVD/BR down the line.

So yeah, I tend to agree the most effective mean to eradicate piracy or reduce it to a phenomenon with fringe commercial effects is something like this Steam for movies, and Hollywood might want to stat looking at theatrical releases more as a kind of higher-end, more exclusive distribution channel rather than as its primary one. To be really effective to stop piracy, I think making the movies available at far more reasonable prices wouldn't be enough, Hollywood would have to consider making them available in other formats much earlier than it does now. Ideally, the day would come they would be released worlwide on the net at the same time they hit theaters. This would mean severely cutting on the "crap", which wouldn't hurt the studios that much but would severely hit the movie-making industry. This would also mean competing with foreign competitors on a much more equal footing, where "delivering the goods" people want to see and visibility would become the primary factors of success. Right now the Hollywoodian model works way too much by keeping nearly all foreign productions out of US commercial theaters (the few it lets in it buys for peanuts and make most of the money itself from distribution) and by saturating the foreign markets and using all sort of means to restrain the screens foreign productions manage to get on their own soil (they do this by dumping packages to theaters: Getting 20 copies of Harry Potter and the assurance the competitors won't have some, or as many, come with garanteeing to the US distributor X screens for 3 weeks minimum to several other of its titles. Of course that's usually titles that won't do good BO and result in bad attendances, and this forces theaters to raise the prices so the full showings cover these losses. And this makes the screens unavailable for local productions. In a few markets concerned to promote or preserve their industry - or with rebuilding a commercial one that Hollywood has all but eradicated, the practice has been outlawed, much to the MPAA's grief, but it hasn't stopped the practice in fact, it just forced the distributors to stop acting openly and keep doing it while pretending they don't. Nowadays they just "don't have" enough copies of big titles for you if you've failed to buy enough of the crappy titles to their taste.