Conglomerates and such

"Jeffrey Katzenberg, while he was still at Disney, once said, “You know this business is not fun anymore". I said "Why is that Jeffrey?", and he said, "Because there used to be a time when somebody would come into my office and be absolutely passionate about his movie and I would think, “God damn! I don’t think this movie would make much money but it shouldn’t lose money because it is a bright idea for a movie. I want to make it.” and with that passion, every once in a while I would say, "You know we are having a pretty good year and so let us take a chance and make that movie. Now we cannot do that anymore. Disney certainly does not do it!"

Has the Hollywood film industry just become consumed in its attempts to make money?

I found an interesting debate online titles "The Future Of Hollywood, Creators, Conglomerates and Culture" - It's abit long winded at times and focuses upon America but it's a worthwhile read about the notion of TNC and goes into detail about HBO and AOL at times; so yeah! READ IT

http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/artists/the_future_of_hollywood_creators_conglomerates_and_culture/

I wont really elaborate upon all of this for the time being so i'm gonna include some of my favourite quotes from the debate here :)

"So what you see out there is a monolithic audience of 16 to 24 years old, who have a great sex drive and a need for action in order to distract them from anything else that might make sense. That is the audience that we are racing towards in order to make big money. That is why we are seeing these wonderful little independent movies that come along and tend to win Oscars and go on to making 6 million dollars. Monster’s Ball was a tremendously successful movie that won the Academy Award for Halle Berry. That movie made the makers about 6 million dollars. In Hollywood today that is chump change. "

"Some people say that the arrival of personal video recorders or digital video recorders will create a new business model which caters to highly tailored choices and creates more potential, successful niche markets which could then leave you with a successful blockbuster strategy and many other strategies as people move away from a time based network model. Is that a possibility? Shall we just not put our faith in technology?"

"Within three or four years, going by the way that technology is advancing, it is going to be feasible for an ordinary person to download movies. Right now it takes a long time even with DSL or fast access or broadband line. but the time is going to come when it is easy to give away movies from somebody who has gotten hold of one, as it has become in the music industry, which has been really devastated by this whole thing."

" I thought you were going to tell him that you want a healthy capitalism, and that unless you have government regulation that breaks up vertical integration, the kind of economic power to fund creativity that he is talking about won’t be liberated. "

"So there is a narrowing of the base of the population from which we draw for fresh and new ideas. They are only a few network executives and these few executives own blocks of the show time and the rest. They are the ones who are now essentially creating and bringing forth the new ideas. We see this impoverishment of what is happening particularly in the field of network shows, much less so in HBO. HBO is a refuge that we now run to. It is like coming home. It has those few people who are alert and looking for some fresh ideas."

"The same thing is true in the motion picture business. The net result of this kind of vertical integration is that the major studios are solely in the business now of making big blockbuster pictures that could make half a billion or 3 quarters of a billion dollars of money that appeal to a very narrow base of customers, i.e. boys with disposable incomes, that is those between 16 to 24.
And anybody with a brain, education and experience or a desire to be enriched by their entertainment experience is simply not being served. It has had an extremely destructive effect on the creative community and a very depressing one for those of us who remember that making movies on television was once fun."

"And this also translates into entertainment because studies have shown that so much American public gets its values, its news, its information, its culture, its intelligence not from watching news but from watching entertainment shows, all in the family, Cosby show, law and order, ER etc."

So there we go, if you read it and enjoyed it then comment me :D
xx