"Business is Down, People!"

"What if no more movies were made? See if I care, because I couldn't sell them anyway. Movie theatres, if not rearranged for alternative development, have sunk to the level of serving as mere signboards for the home-video market, like the posters they have on display themselves. DVD's hardly sell for more than they basically cost, production- and distribution-wise, and it's just the hype that keeps the thing going really. A couple of suckers who pay for the rest. You've got the pronounced victory for Blu-Ray to become the new carrier, but the price of plastic rises along with the price of it's basic element, oil. You know DVD reigns as the all time most successful carrier-medium for movies. It took DVD ten years to build up it's current spectrum. The main market for Blu-Ray is exactly the people who bought all those DVD's in the first place. Just try and make 'm start all over. Put DVD's in steel-case special two-disc edition and just pray they buy. Carton casings have also become quite popular lately. But it's one big struggle against the current, isn't it? Like Hansje Brinker, you know, with the finger in the dyke. What with the pirating, and the internet, and everyone burning at home. Streamlining, TiVo, what have you. I can name you more than one friend who's already lost his business over that. Video rent stores, all the music and movies retail, they're going through some tough times, and they were already long before this whole credit crunch whatshamacallit. Business for them has been declining well since the introduction of DVD, right? Some parts of town don't have any video stores any longer and about half the sales-retail is gone. This is a buyer's market, not a seller's market. Movies cost more to promote than to make. Real movie stars, you know the kind that was a sure bet winner, have become all but extinct and special effects are starting to make people yawn. The major studios are so panic ridden, they keep the critic's community in a tight strangle hold. They really have to pay the people to come and see the show. They claim major commercial success when they can, even have the audacity to claim the biggest money makers of all time. The stock values of the umbrella corporations hardly flinch when these numbers are presented. Well, for one thing they conveniently leave out inflation, when they come with those absolute numbers, don't they? Or what about the relative cost of a movie ticket over time as compared to the rising costs of moviemaking. To recover the real greatest movie hit of all time, one would have to do a head count, wouldn't they? And even so, how many people watch a movie at home on tv or video? How can you count that? The biggest movie success would be the movie that has been seen by the most eyes, and then again the most times. The biggest money makers come with the years, as some movies earn a living for generations. Nowadays visually anything can be achieved and well: 'how silly can you get', that seems to be the song of the day. But maybe the market should dry up. It's only for about a century now that these recording devices have become widespread. The overall music and movie catalogues can only increase in time. With every new invention, people have something new to occupy themselves with. The video game market has already overtaken the movie market in volume for years now. There's a helluvalotta tv-series out there people are talking about, but I can't seem to get myself to sit down for that box set. How much can you take? You see, people don't get more time to spend. And people still go out, have to work, like to play, write, read, and have all kinds of social intercourse. Maybe I should consider taking up internet writing full-time."