One of the things Father Christmas brought me was a copy of Edward Jay Epstein’s book The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood (review in the not too distant future, hopefully — it’s a big book). I must confess that I’m fascinated with the financial side of Hollywood as well as its artistic output. It seems to be an area that few people outside the studios consider except to marvel at ever-bigger box office totals, perhaps because it is so well hidden and shrouded in secrecy.
Anyway, Epstein has written another piece for Slate Magazine, this time about the ageism of Hollywood (basically saying that once a woman gets past 30, her time is over unless she can prove she can act). Something in the piece echoes in his book:
When studios found that they could no longer count on habitual moviegoers to fill theaters, they went into the very risky business of creating tailor-made audiences for each and every movie. Like in an election campaign, the studios had to get people to turn out at the multiplexes on a specific date: the opening weekend. The principal means of generating this audience was and still is to buy ads on national television. For this strategy to work efficiently, the studios must find a target audience that predictably clusters around programs on which they can afford to buy time. They then bombard this audience–usually seven times in the preceding week to an opening–with 30-second eye-catching ads.The studios zero in on teens not because they necessarily like them or because they buy buckets of popcorn, but because they are the only demographic group that can be efficiently motivated to leave their homes in large numbers. Even though lassoing this teen herd is enormously expensive–more than $30 million a film–the studios profit from the fact that this young audience is also the coin of the realm for merchandisers such as McDonald, Domino’s Pizza, and Pepsi. The studios depend upon these companies for tie-in deals that can supply $100 million or more in advertising to a single film and can expand the primary audience for DVDs, video games, and other licensable properties on which the studios now rely on for their economic survival.
Something I’m sure he also iterates in his book is the fact that children/young adults are targetted because they can be guaranteed to be watching TV and be exposed to the advertising. Looking back at my TV consumption over the years I have to say they have a point, I watch far less TV than I did when I was a kid, and far less regularly too (I even miss some of the small number of shows I actually do want to watch). The question remains though, what do the studio execs do about the rise of Personal/Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) and time-delay TV viewing? Their trailers have less impact when they’re speeding by at two-, three- or six-times speed, even less when they’re cut out entirely as some of the boxes allow. I’ve no doubt they’ll find other ways to reach their audience, and whoever figures out the way is in for a big payday.
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
