The Entertainment Industry's Dilema

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With only a few owners of most of radio, most of it is pretty boring now. I listen only ~15 minutes/week, when others are in the car. I listen to books in the car when alone (Thank you library and Overdrive). I'm not surprised that it's slowly dying.
In the pre Covid when I worked in the office it was in an expensive and trendy ZIP code; most of my coworkers had privileged backgrounds. When my coworkers learned I listened to radio they kinda ribbed me because "radio is for poor people". Crazy huh? I think radio has a purpose. I've been listening to KROQ for like 30+ years because it's the best way hear new stuff and expand my horizons with music I normally wouldn't listen to. Oh and I listen to an 80's station too because I 'm crazy for 80's new wave. And a classic rock station when the other two don't have anything good playing. I live in Greater Los Angeles area I have found the radio selections aren't nearly as good in most places; I travelled a lot in the 90's and early 00 to find the radio stations across America were just awful.
 
I love listening to NPR on the radio. When I had to go into work, I listened to NPR, Podcasts, Music or Books depending on how I felt that day. Tiny Desk and Fresh Air are always nice to listen to, and Tiny Desk is how I discovered several great artists.
 
Take what the Wall Street Journal says with a grain of salt, they're owned with old Network money, so they are opposed to streaming in general.
 
Take what the Wall Street Journal says with a grain of salt, they're owned with old Network money, so they are opposed to streaming in general.
Rupert Murdoch IIRC, so it's going to have his activist agenda. See also Fox Television, The Sun.
 
Take what the Wall Street Journal says with a grain of salt, they're owned with old Network money, so they are opposed to streaming in general.

Then why would they write an article saying it's doing really well, they should be badmouthing it.

Rupert Murdoch IIRC, so it's going to have his activist agenda. See also Fox Television, The Sun.

But there's no real political agenda here either. It's not involving a political agenda, nor does Rupert own or is invested in any of the companies. None of the streaming services have his involvement.

WSJ is aimed at providing investors with accurate information so they can choose what to invest in, and this was a report on what a media metrics company had surveyed and accurately reported.

I can take it with a "grain of salt", but I also tend to trust sources like the Hollywood Reporter and WSJ. It's okay to be a little skeptical, but I'm not going to fall into the trap of cynicism where people think the "Mainstream Media is lying to you" as the default whenever they don't agree with the message, which to me is a problem that has serious consequences for our civilization.
 
Speaking of that, here's another interesting article on the Streaming services, noting the unique challenges they will all have to face.

 
Regarding WSJ and business reporting. They sometimes have scary good sources for information. I was at a company going public and WSJ seemed to have the only reporters who actually understood what was going on in the company. Sometimes they were reporting stuff before employees even knew what was going on. Turns out they had one of the executives admins as an informant.
 
Then why would they write an article saying it's doing really well, they should be badmouthing it.
I'm not saying they're wrong, but they have a slant, take that into consideration. A lot of the reports on Netflix made claims that have yet been unsubstantiated. Again, they may be reporting it accurately, but they do have an angle.
 
That one you mention might not be considered a blockbuster, so it could be more likely to go direct to PVOD like several other mid-tier movies. Unless you were itching to see that one in the theater.
 
That one you mention might not be considered a blockbuster, so it could be more likely to go direct to PVOD like several other mid-tier movies. Unless you were itching to see that one in the theater.

I'd be fine with that, I just want them to hurry up and get it out
 
The Digital Bits just reported the state of the physical media (DVD/blu-ray/UHD blu-ray) sales, and it's taken a big hit this year.


Summary, sales were down over 25% this year. And the sales have been declining by anywhere from 5% to 18% between 2011 and 2020, with almost at least 10% since 2014. However, 2020 marks the very first time that the rapid growth of digital has outpaced the accelerating decline in physical media, so an inflection point has been reached.

I think we will start seeing releases of physical media become more niche based and maybe be aimed at collectors/die hard fans. At least those studio who cater to them.
 
I've noticed bluray releases for new films, particularly independent and foreign films, are few and far between these days, and even some old standards have been OOP long enough to start going up in price on the secondary market. Moreover there's a lot of series that havent gotten any home release - Netflix in particular seems to be against it - I guess to not devalue their streaming.

Of course a black market of homemade DVDs/blurays has exploded.
 
I still get blu-rays/4K of my favorites, but I think the writing is on the wall. The biggest issue is the fact that manufacturing of the hardware is down now. It's hard to find a computer now with a CD/DVD/bluray disk, for instance, and while there's still commodity products for DVD, it's harder to find premium makers of 4K readers.

I was going to say this in the B5 thread, but I think for movies/TV having physical media was a short-lived endeavor. I don't think it has to do with companies just wanting us to rent instead of own, there's several factors involved.
  • We only really had affordable home media for a short time period. When we started with VHS tapes, most were high priced for rental and few vendors started with a "buy" price until we got to the 90s. The DVD pretty much started the more affordable copies.
  • Format changes are too common. We went from VHS to DVD to blu-ray (and 4K blu-ray) in a short period, and there were format wars along the way (HD-DVD and Betamax were losers, and the 3D format fizzled). With the rise of technology and digital TV, the fidelity will constantly improve and not keep up with physical media. What's happened is people end up buying the same thing a few times now in their lifetime. And that leaves them with a bunch of physical objects that are less useful.
  • Digital distribution once the Internet had the bandwidth and technology is much easier, and it revolutionized music and software already.
  • The thing about recordings rather than books is that they are more likely to decay, especially in your lifetime. While tapes were extremely fragile, even CDs and DVDs have a "shelf life"--put it this way, it's very unlikely you'll be able to give away your video collection to your Grandkids, as the rot will set in. To preserve the format, constant copying must be done.
I know people are concerned about having to "rent all the time", etc., worried about content companies going out of business, possible pulling of content, etc. But I think this is what most users prefer now. Spotify kind of revealed that most people would rather rent access to a whole library of music rather than build up access slowly by owning their albums. I think the "collector" mentality is a minority faction. I do hope that like Vinyl records coming back for audiophiles, 4K discs will remain and we will still have folks like Shout Factory and other vendors releasing premium versions.
 
I still get blu-rays/4K of my favorites, but I think the writing is on the wall. The biggest issue is the fact that manufacturing of the hardware is down now. It's hard to find a computer now with a CD/DVD/bluray disk, for instance, and while there's still commodity products for DVD, it's harder to find premium makers of 4K readers.

I was going to say this in the B5 thread, but I think for movies/TV having physical media was a short-lived endeavor. I don't think it has to do with companies just wanting us to rent instead of own, there's several factors involved.
  • We only really had affordable home media for a short time period. When we started with VHS tapes, most were high priced for rental and few vendors started with a "buy" price until we got to the 90s. The DVD pretty much started the more affordable copies.
  • Format changes are too common. We went from VHS to DVD to blu-ray (and 4K blu-ray) in a short period, and there were format wars along the way (HD-DVD and Betamax were losers, and the 3D format fizzled). With the rise of technology and digital TV, the fidelity will constantly improve and not keep up with physical media. What's happened is people end up buying the same thing a few times now in their lifetime. And that leaves them with a bunch of physical objects that are less useful.
  • Digital distribution once the Internet had the bandwidth and technology is much easier, and it revolutionized music and software already.
  • The thing about recordings rather than books is that they are more likely to decay, especially in your lifetime. While tapes were extremely fragile, even CDs and DVDs have a "shelf life"--put it this way, it's very unlikely you'll be able to give away your video collection to your Grandkids, as the rot will set in. To preserve the format, constant copying must be done.
I know people are concerned about having to "rent all the time", etc., worried about content companies going out of business, possible pulling of content, etc. But I think this is what most users prefer now. Spotify kind of revealed that most people would rather rent access to a whole library of music rather than build up access slowly by owning their albums. I think the "collector" mentality is a minority faction. I do hope that like Vinyl records coming back for audiophiles, 4K discs will remain and we will still have folks like Shout Factory and other vendors releasing premium versions.

I don't like it, but it is definitely a thing. I bought a new laptop and desktop last year. Later I had to buy a portable DVD RW, after I realized neither came with one installed. These were not bottom tier computers where this was done to cut costs, I guess the ability to use DVDs is no longer considered important.

I kind of get it on a laptop, where size / weight is a factor but the desktop really surprised me.

I need to go sort my floppy disks now. :argh:
 
I kind of get it on a laptop, where size / weight is a factor but the desktop really surprised me.

Once other portable storage came, optical disks were antiquated like floppies. A DVD can hold less than 5GB of data, where now you can even get thumb drives with 2TB (2000GB). Biggest things DVD offered were the ability to boot an OS (but thumb drives can do that with newer BIOS), and turning your PC into a video player. Basically, the DVD is now simply a read-only floppy in today's environment.
 
Once other portable storage came, optical disks were antiquated like floppies. A DVD can hold less than 5GB of data, where now you can even get thumb drives with 2TB (2000GB). Biggest things DVD offered were the ability to boot an OS (but thumb drives can do that with newer BIOS), and turning your PC into a video player. Basically, the DVD is now simply a read-only floppy in today's environment.

People still have music CDs, games and movies on DVD so I still expected the players to be standard. Thumb drives have gotten stupid cheap so the decline of DVD-RW is not surprising.

Of course it even took me a couple months to realize there was no DVD player installed...
 
People still have music CDs, games and movies on DVD so I still expected the players to be standard. Thumb drives have gotten stupid cheap so the decline of DVD-RW is not surprising.

Of course it even took me a couple months to realize there was no DVD player installed...

I don't use any of those on media anymore. I try to get everything without media and am slowly divesting myself of the media that I still have.
 
I don't use any of those on media anymore. I try to get everything without media and am slowly divesting myself of the media that I still have.
I was like that but then all the various streaming services stopped playing nice with each other and stuff I used to get for free started getting charged for. I started ripping my physical media so I had my own streaming service.
 
I was like that but then all the various streaming services stopped playing nice with each other and stuff I used to get for free started getting charged for. I started ripping my physical media so I had my own streaming service.

That's what my NASes(what is the plural of NAS?) are for :grin:

That's also the reason I have to divest myself of my media as I got them for ripping (redbox works fine for that now...)
 
I think we will start seeing releases of physical media become more niche based and maybe be aimed at collectors/die hard fans. At least those studio who cater to them.

I thought we reached that point years ago.
 
One Victim of the "Dilema" is here.


People will probably reflexively blame Disney, but I think is was a case of a weaker Hollywood and the fact that Blue Sky films have not done as well in the last several years. I was kind of concerned about them as they haven't had a big hit, and outside of Ice Age they don't seem to have anything like the cache of Pixar's creativity or Illumination's whimsy.

That's too bad, because I thought the team did a great job with adapting Peanuts to a "quasi-CGI" standard and feel they cared about their product. They are also "local" (I'm in New England and they're in CT).
 
Figured I'd revisit based on what's been happening so far.

It seems like the economic shocks have disrupted the smaller chains and independent theaters. In the months since the last post, a local chain that existed for two decades in this area (called Cinemagic) shut down, Arclight which owned some prestigious theaters in Southern CA had closed, and even Alamo declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. They also closed some weaker theaters since the shutdown. The bigger chains apparently have deeper pockets and have survived.

There's definitely been a change in release strategies. The new agreement now is that the exclusivity window for Theaters has dropped from something like 90-120 days to about 45 days before they can release DVDs or On-Demand viewing. The dual release on streaming platforms has also sent mixed signals. It does seem to be holding back movie profits that would be if they were only in theaters. There's an odd uncertainty now -- it seems like the studios are pushing to get people back into the theaters, but there's some hedging of bets again while we have COVID surges. And now there's tension between the talent and the studios about this again, most notably the lawsuit over Black Widow.

I wonder how many folks will actually want to see movies in the theaters again. I did see Black Widow and there were a lot of enthusiastic people there, but it remains to be seen if there are some folks who are going to just wait for the streaming release. I see release schedules getting crowded with all the delays. There's going to be 4 Marvel movies next from Disney (I'm not even counting Sony "Spider-Verse" stuff).

Streaming does seem to be picking up in strength.

I got to go to a comic convention and it was nicely packed -- I think there's a lot of pent-up desire to get back to these types of events. Depending on how COVID goes, we may see a lot more excitement for concerts and cons and other events. But I'm hedging that bet based on the virus -- people may be scared of the surges, others may not attend if there's any mandates required to attend.

Overall I'm hoping this is all a short-term disruption. I do feel one major effect of this will be the actual cinema experience, as I feel that is weakening in general (due to better home viewing technology and massive amounts of content), and I also wonder now as US movies seem to be weakening in China (which is a major profit center).

We will see...
 
I have almost no interest in going back to theaters. Its expensive. I have a better seat at my house. I can control the volume. It pauses when I have to pee. If there's an asshole next to me I'm either married to her or theyre a child of mine. The snacks are cheaper and better.
 
I am building up to where eventually, down the road, I will have a 120+ inch screen with projector and an upgraded sound system that handles various formats. I am a supporter of physical media and streaming still does not compare to the quality on a disk. There are some movies that are with seeing on a truly large screen or with a crowd, but there is just not the variety and quality of films to make going to the theatre a regular thing for me.
 
I live in a medium-sized town that due to being a university town has two arthouse theatres so I'm lucky enough to have that as a viable option to watch non-blockbusters in a proper theatre post-Covid.

Watching a well made film in a theatre is ideal and with the right audience, which smaller theatres tend to attract, it all adds up to a much greater experience. Still glad that so many films are available from boutique labels and streamers though.
 
I have almost no interest in going back to theaters. Its expensive. I have a better seat at my house. I can control the volume. It pauses when I have to pee. If there's an asshole next to me I'm either married to her or theyre a child of mine. The snacks are cheaper and better.


Yep. I'm done with the movie theaters. I honestly can't see myself ever seeing a movie in the theaters again as it was a largely terrible experience pre-COVID-19, and I haven't missed it since COVID-19. We'll see.
 
Yep. I'm done with the movie theaters. I honestly can't see myself ever seeing a movie in the theaters again as it was a largely terrible experience pre-COVID-19, and I haven't missed it since COVID-19. We'll see.
There is only one way it is better to me. It is an agreed on single purpose event that attempts to preclude any other distractions or conversation. So for 2 hrs ish I get to focus on one thing without 5 other people asking me for anything. In that regard it is excellent but as my kids age that becomes less of a plus.
 
I haven't been to a movie theater in a long time. There just aren't any movies that I mind waiting to see months (or even years) later. In addition to all the reasons that Bunch Bunch gave, I prefer to watch most things with subtitles these days.

I do miss going to rpg and horror conventions, but we're going to have to get much further along with Covid vaccination numbers in my area before I will even consider that. I have a tendency to get "con crud" at those things, anyway, so I'm definitely not pushing my luck with Covid.
 
I have almost no interest in going back to theaters. Its expensive. I have a better seat at my house. I can control the volume. It pauses when I have to pee. If there's an asshole next to me I'm either married to her or theyre a child of mine. The snacks are cheaper and better.

I haven't been to a theater since the second hobbit movie, so 2014-15- ish?

Not really anti-theater but it is kind of a hassle scheduling, expensive and just not that much that appeals to me in movie releases vs the stuff that is streaming. I've also got a stupid big screen TV at home which helps, can't believe how cheap 50"+ TVs have gotten. About a year ago we demoted the 55 to the bedroom and put a 70-something in the living room.

Call of Cthulhu on a 55" in a dark room is very creepy. It got to where I wouldn't play it unless there were others in the house.
 
I am building up to where eventually, down the road, I will have a 120+ inch screen with projector and an upgraded sound system that handles various formats. I am a supporter of physical media and streaming still does not compare to the quality on a disk. There are some movies that are with seeing on a truly large screen or with a crowd, but there is just not the variety and quality of films to make going to the theatre a regular thing for me.

The sentiment of people okay with watching movies at home seems to be growing -- as it has slowly grown over the decades since the introduction of Television, though I think COVID fast-forwarded a bit. Taking something away for a while let's people know if they'd really miss it or not.

Physical Media however is likely not going to keep up. I don't see any new physical formats coming after UHD blu-ray. I actually can see better resolution on streaming stuff than I can see from cable or even non 4k blu-ray. While Internet has it's problems, mostly from bad connections, I don't see physical media for movies and TVs being anything other than for collectors, and that market will likely dwindle over the years.

I live in a medium-sized town that due to being a university town has two arthouse theatres so I'm lucky enough to have that as a viable option to watch non-blockbusters in a proper theatre post-Covid.

Watching a well made film in a theatre is ideal and with the right audience, which smaller theatres tend to attract, it all adds up to a much greater experience. Still glad that so many films are available from boutique labels and streamers though.
Glad those arthouse theaters in your town will survive--I guess the big concern I had was a lot of them might go out of business, but those seem to be niche and likely dealing with a specialized genre. Some, however, may not.

This reminds me of what happened with the music industry. I saw so many people say things like "I hope the industry collapses, then instead of Britney Spears or Boy Bands we will have true artists creating art". But, what actually happened is the collapse of the power of labels made it harder to finance the middle tier bands, bands that started in garages. Meantime, larger labels aimed at tween to teen audiences by recruiting multi-talented folks who were on the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon.

I can see if smaller chains collapse, the rest of the theaters would double-down on the huge blockbuster stuff and the art-house or cult films would suffer more.

I do miss going to rpg and horror conventions, but we're going to have to get much further along with Covid vaccination numbers in my area before I will even consider that. I have a tendency to get "con crud" at those things, anyway, so I'm definitely not pushing my luck with Covid.

Understandable. We'll definitely have to see how things go here. These cons have just started to come back. I think safety protocols will help, but we do need more herd immunity too.
 
Physical Media however is likely not going to keep up. I don't see any new physical formats coming after UHD blu-ray. I actually can see better resolution on streaming stuff than I can see from cable or even non 4k blu-ray. While Internet has it's problems, mostly from bad connections, I don't see physical media for movies and TVs being anything other than for collectors, and that market will likely dwindle over the years.

I think this overlooks deficiencies in internet infrastructure. Once you get out of the major metro areas many smaller communities suffer from mediocre connection speeds. This includes many smaller cities, it isn't just people living in the outer reaches.
Quality physical media will remain popular until reliable high speed internet is commonplace. Nothing like getting the dreaded buffering circle at a moment of high drama. :shock:
 
I think this overlooks deficiencies in internet infrastructure. Once you get out of the major metro areas many smaller communities suffer from mediocre connection speeds. This includes many smaller cities, it isn't just people living in the outer reaches.
Quality physical media will remain popular until reliable high speed internet is commonplace. Nothing like getting the dreaded buffering circle at a moment of high drama. :shock:


The thing is, a lot of stuff just isn't being released on physical media anymore. A *lot* of television shows aren't coming to physical media at all now and are streaming only, and remasters of old shows like Babylon 5 remain streaming only.
 
If you just go up the thread to this post, I pointed out that there's been a steady decline in sales over the past 10 years for DVDs and similar Physical media for movies, and that an inflection point has been reached...keep in mind the people reporting this are die-hard physical media fans as well.

I mean, you are correct about some rural areas having crappier bandwidth, but I think there's been a lot more progress now. Not to mention the fact it doesn't make sense for businesses to support physical media if consumers actually prefer streaming, etc.
 
It does seem to be holding back movie profits that would be if they were only in theaters.

Actually, I think the profits held back were actually profits made. They blame these numbers on the streaming, but I think that's a misdirection- the films in question wouldn't have done double what they did (or even more as they imply). I think so far, there hasn't been a really good movie that's been theatre only to test this theory. I think they'll see with Shang-Chi it won't- but will they take that as Shang-Chi was a miss for Marvel, or will they take it as intended? That's the largest question...
 
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