Deep Media

Why blockbusters are not the wave of the future

Summer is now officially over, and for Hollywood the results were not good. No, the industry didn't suffer a repeat of the string of debacles that hit last year, when one mega-budget picture after an­other—White House Down, The Lone Ranger, Pacific Rim, Turbo, R.I.P.D.—unceremoniously tanked. In fact, the news was actually worse. 

Last year at least the hits made up for the misses. This year the North American summer box office was down 15 per cent overall. Movies like The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and the latest Transformers installment drew crowds to the multiplex, but smaller crowds than in the past. And there are signs the core audience is losing interest: According to the MPAA, the number of frequent moviegoers (once a month or more) last year fell in every age demographic between 12 and 49, with the biggest drop coming among 18-to-25-year-olds. It's not hard to figure out why: As producer Lynda Obst put it recently, “How many times can you see the same cities destroyed? How many ways are there to destroy them?”

How not to get the future of media? Pay no attention to what the audience is trying to tell you

What’s missing in most of the discussions media executives have about their businesses' future? The audience. Media execs across the board—in print, television, movies, and music—worry about shrinking profit margins, unpredictable technology shifts, and the ever-present specter of piracy. All of which is entirely understandable. But too often they miss what’s most important—not technology itself, but the shift in behavior and expectations that occurs as audiences embrace some technologies and ignore others. That’s the change that’s ultimately going to matter.

John Weber for The Milken Institute Review

This came up last summer when Peter Passell, editor of the quarter­ly Milken Institute Review, asked me to write about disruption in the me­dia industries. When an econo­mist men­tions disruption he's usually think­ing of Joseph Schumpeter, the Aus­trian/American theorist who 70-odd years ago introduced the idea of “creative destruction”—the notion that outmoded industries and com­panies will inevitably col­lapse and die as new ones arise. This kind of thing provokes terror in the hearts of the people running con­ventional me­dia corporations, who anticipate (with considerable jus­tification) that they are going to be on the receiving end of it. 

So, what should they do? Again and again, the response has been to ex­periment ineffectually while si­mul­taneously trying to hang on to once-dependable business models. Which is exactly what not to do.

Conversation with Moby: Loves David Lynch, intimidated by Eno

Photo by Bryan Derballa/Wired.com

To write about the tale of flotsam love that comprises the video for Moby's "Mistake," I sat down with him for an hour and a half or so at a cafe on Lafayette Street in Manhattan. He had a pot of Earl Grey tea and I had—well, actually I don't remember what I had. But here's what he had to say, starting with a dream sequence inspired by my digital recorder:

 

Never mind the Sex Pistols, here's the surf police

There's been a lot of discussion over at the TPM Café Book Club about what the Internet is doing to the music scene — not just to the industry, which we can all see is crumbling, but to music itself. Bill Wasik (whose new book And Then There's This was this week's topic) declares himself depressed about "the ecstatic surf from new band to new band, from track to track, from style to style, that serves as the predominant mode of indie-rock fandom today." In the past, Wasik maintains, overnight sensations had "almost always been manufactured by radio, or by big record labels, or by the interplay between the two"; now it's fans on the Web who are responsible. Amanda Marcotte observes that there's nothing new about flash-in-the-pans. She's right on that one: Blues Magoos, anybody? And Nicholas Carr points out that the goal of the major labels "was not to encourage one hit wonders but rather to sustain elephantine franchises like, say, ELO, Yes, and the Eagles."

Having endured one too many ELO concerts in my rock-critic years, I can vouch for that as well. But then he goes on: