[quote=nostradamus]flu I was at home depot yesterday and they have plenty of masks. I wasn’t there to buy masks.
partypup thanks for the update. I guess the world is going broadband. Many know good old Walt Disney made a killing (in movies) during the great depression. Do you feel like the cuts are a trimming of fat– a good thing– or the death throes of a company trying to survive?[/quote]
My company definitely needed to trim some fat – without question. We’ve lived high off the hog for YEARS. The big talent agencies are probably getting hit the hardest, as reality TV has been eating into their revenue base since 2000. Those shows don’t require recognizable screen talent, writers or directors (although it is true that all reality TV is “loosely” scripted). So agencies have been losing a lot of business for most of the decade due to the decline in the number of more expensive-to-produce scripted dramas. The bigger agencies are eating the weaker ones, and some are disappearing entirely. That’s the free market, that’s what needs to happen.
All in all, as with the rest of the U.S. economy, the entertainment industry has been spending money based on profits that don’t really exist (my production colleagues frequently run out of money for any given year by summer and end up spending into the following year’s budget). This has been going on for years. Unions push salaries to go up, eyeballs are drifting away, ad revenue is harder to come by, but you need to stay “competitive” and keep throwing crap at the screen hoping some of it will stick, so you spend money you don’t really have – thinking the pie will just keep getting bigger.
Until a few slices go missing. I see what’s taking place as a much-needed realignment, although it will definitely be painful for everyone involved, myself included. Television no longer justifies the money that’s spent, especially on talent, and I suspect that in the mid-to-long term television won’t be going away, but it will probably have lesser influence when compared to other media, which necessarily means that salaries will have to adjust downward. As much as I hate to admit it, this is a good thing. You can’t imagine the number of times I sit at my desk, listening to an agent scream at me that he;s entitled to another $5K an episode for a loser manager whose only talent is being able to hitch his wagon to someone else with only slightly more talent. Like real estate, the entertainment industry had gotten out of control and needed a reality check badly. It’s getting one now.
The downside is that as TV and entertainment in general begin to seriously contract, the few choices for quality movies and programming will be whittled away. Independent film and quirky shows on cable and network are really going to feel the pinch. When money is tight, it becomes impossible to cast your net into every pool, regardless of size. So the decision will undoubtedly be made to spend what little money they have on fare that appeals to the lowest common denominator. I know this is done already, but expect it to a much greater degree in the future because networks simply won’t be able to support a show that isn’t rating, and no one will want to take a chance on a movie that can’t cover it’s marketing budget in the first week of release.
