Surprise: Hollywood Favors Short-Term Fads to Long-Term Strategy
Date : 03 14 2008 Category : Business
Techdirt
It's no secret that the entertainment industry has some execs who are positively proud of the fact that they'll sacrifice long-term strategy for short-term gains, but you'd hope that there was someone, somewhere with a powerful position in the industry who would point out why that's not a particularly intelligent strategy. Take, for example, the MPAA's position on net neutrality. Last summer, the MPAA sent a letter to the FCC opposing net neutrality on the grounds that it would hinder its anti-piracy efforts. It would appear that the MPAA is getting more vocal about this, as MPAA boss Dan Glickman repeated the charges yet again that net neutrality would harm its business.
Of course, the only way that's actually true is if the MPAA views the internet as mostly being about piracy, rather than a future distribution channel. Because, as Jon Healy points out in the link above, in a non-neutral internet, where ISPs get to charge extra to heavy bandwidth users, the movie studios are suddenly going to find that it's a lot more expensive to distribute movies (extremely high bandwidth items) online, since that will be exactly what the tollbooths are set up for. So, in coming out against net neutrality, the MPAA is basically saying that it wants distribution costs online to be higher. Perhaps it's no surprise. The industry really doesn't want to embrace the online world, as is quite evident from its repeated half-assed efforts at creating online movie download services. Perhaps Glickman and the studio bosses really believe that they can go back to a world where only the studios control the distribution mechanisms, even if they're a lot more expensive, cumbersome and inefficient. It does seem odd, though, that any business would prefer that its distribution systems be more expensive and less useful -- but that just goes to show you the level of strategic thinking that sometimes goes on in Hollywood.
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Of course, the only way that's actually true is if the MPAA views the internet as mostly being about piracy, rather than a future distribution channel. Because, as Jon Healy points out in the link above, in a non-neutral internet, where ISPs get to charge extra to heavy bandwidth users, the movie studios are suddenly going to find that it's a lot more expensive to distribute movies (extremely high bandwidth items) online, since that will be exactly what the tollbooths are set up for. So, in coming out against net neutrality, the MPAA is basically saying that it wants distribution costs online to be higher. Perhaps it's no surprise. The industry really doesn't want to embrace the online world, as is quite evident from its repeated half-assed efforts at creating online movie download services. Perhaps Glickman and the studio bosses really believe that they can go back to a world where only the studios control the distribution mechanisms, even if they're a lot more expensive, cumbersome and inefficient. It does seem odd, though, that any business would prefer that its distribution systems be more expensive and less useful -- but that just goes to show you the level of strategic thinking that sometimes goes on in Hollywood.
Permalink | Comments | Email This Story