Unbelievable Corporatism

Everyone knows journalism is dead. Profit motive for news organizations can only lead to stories that will make money. But what I saw on 60 Minutes last night shows news organizations to be nothing more than shills for their corporate directors.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Hollywood had a record profit year in 2008. Hollywood’s revenue was up 2% for the year to a record $9.76 billion. (I am not paying a subscription to the Hollywood Reporter, so I got these numbers from this guy.) In 2006, the industry’s all-media revenue was $42.6. billion. So it must be good times right? Business is certainly booming. $42.6 billion! Ummm, not so, says 60 Minutes in their fluff piece for the movie industry.




I guess the piracy industry is going to wipe out Hollywood. Because of these evil pirates, the poor behind-the-scenes people are starving and the industry is taking a huge hit. Oh wait, they had record revenues last year? Kiss my ass.

Just in case I ever get that dream PR job, I am going to make up a few arguments for the industry:

"We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the internet and its necessary companion called BitTorrent. And it is like a great tidal wave just off the shore. This internet and BitTorrent threaten profoundly the life-sustaining protection, I guess you would call it, on which copy right owners depend, on which film people depend, on which television people depend and it is called copyright."

I'm pretty good, right?

"Nothing of value is free. It is very easy to convince people that it is in their best interest to give away somebody else's property for nothing, but even the most guileless among us know that this is a cave of illusion where commonsense is lured and then quietly strangled."

I should work for the industry. How about this whopper?

"I say to you that the internet is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone."

Not sure one would see that on the SATs, but how can you argue against that?

Now replace “internet” with “VCR.” Replace “BitTorrent” with “blank video cassette.” Sound familiar to anyone? Reach back to 1982 and this is what THE representative for the movie industry was saying about the nascent technology soon to completely destroy the movie industry – the VCR. A new technology came out and the movie industry freaked because they were afraid they would lose some of their profits. Well according to them, they should just be scraping by at this point.

$42.6 billion comes to mind.

I think we learned a valuable lesson here. Do not trust this industry when they forecast what a new technology will do to their business. Their predictions in 1982 were not just a little off base; they were astronomically wrong. That’s like, Congressional Budget Office wrong (cheap shot). The scary new technology grew into a DVD and Blue Ray industry that made them $22.4 billion last year.

Now think about the 60 Minutes piece. This was an infomercial against net neutrality. Sure it was a reporting piece – it reported PR from the movie industry.

Start with the emotionally captivated interviewer – “He brought a child in there with him to do this?!?” Please. Next thing we know it, the Freakonomics guys will be talking about a correlation between watching dad film movies and violent crime.

Gambling, human trafficking, child prostitution, drug dealing… counterfeiting movies!!

Then the spokesperson tells us, “Piracy is costing the movie industry $6 billion a year at the box office.” Riiiiiiiiiight. If that’s the case, their revenue numbers would have been higher before all of this crazy internet piracy started. Wait… last year they had a record year of $9.76 billion at the box office? Something tells me the accountants from the afraid of VCR days are still working there.

Spokesman goes on to say, “They want to pay less, or close to nothing.” This is the point that illuminates the dishonesty from the MPAA. The people buying pirated movies are not the same as the people going to movies. The spokesman even acknowledges this when saying, “The people buying these are not that quality conscious, that’s not the experience they are looking for.” But when the MPAA complains about lost revenues, it says each pirated movie is a lost sale. See how ridiculous that is? The person buying the pirated copy has no interest in going to the movie in the first place, and this is something their spokesman acknowledges! And how about this – “Virtually every movie is pirated on the internet”? Well if they are recording record profits with every movie on the internet, something tells me piracy is not as big of a problem as they are claiming.

And now why I think this was an infomercial against network neutrality. Network neutrality is quietly emerging as the next political fight. Large media companies don’t want to be regulated because they want to charge more for certain content. Something like CBS programming, maybe?

But why have a piece on network neutrality, where you would be somewhat required to offer counter opinions? Instead, run a piece scaring people about how the internet is going to take your favorite movies away from you. And what about this new internet technology? The last part of the segment tells us all we need to know about CBS’s opinion – “And things could be even worse unless something is done in cyberspace to stop people from downloading.” What? The reporter stated that as a fact. I hate to use the Fox News style, but some people would argue things are not getting worse, considering they MADE RECORD PROFITS LAST YEAR. I wonder why a company owning several television stations and Showtime would run a piece like this?

We know the movie industry will go very far to protect themselves. We have learned that they will make up numbers and say whatever they want in order to protect their business model. We also know they are too stubborn and dumb to realize how to adapt to new business models, considering they tried to block something that ended up making them $22.4 billion last year.

When the net neutrality discussion heats up, remember this about the industry and think about where most of the reported information is coming from.