TV Revenue the saving grace for studios

Studios are able to make up for the huge deficit from their film divisions by offsetting loss with tremendous gain from the TV divisions.  The Wrap disclosed a remarkable report showing the differences:

Viacom                $341M vs $3.85B

Disney                  $618M vs $6.15B

TimeWarner         $600M vs $5.05B

NewsCorp             $927M vs $3.67B

NBCU                        $27M vs $3.31B

http://www.thewrap.com/media/article/why-television-trouncing-film-major-media-companies-42751

One more reason to make sure that your film distribution gets a piece of the pie in foreign sales - TV market is big across the world and they are buying indie films for television broadcast!

The truth be told - are the studios making money?

The Kragen report recently posted a very disparaging report.  Deadline re-posted the article.

http://www.deadline.com/interstitial/?ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.deadline.com%2F2012%2F06%2Fdomestic-movie-revenues-arent-keeping-up-with-release-costs-kagan%2F

I've been waiting for the truth to be told about the state of the industry and confirms my not very optimistic predictions.  This report shows that on average, the studios are recouping only 46% of their release costs.  In English, they are not making enough to cover their expenses, from distribution.  Albeit, the other divisions will hopefully pick up the slack (consumer products/merchandising, publishing, licensing, etc).  But to me this does not make a profitable business model overall.  Read the article:

"The mostly dreary new analysis from SNL Kagan reflects the continuing decline last year in domestic home video sales and rentals — and helps to explain why studios are so determined to expand overseas. The research firm says that the average film only recouped 46% of the release costs (negative costs plus domestic prints and advertising) from domestic box office sales and home video transactions. That’s down from 48% in 2010. Paramount’s 14 films delivered the best performance. Kagan figures the studio collected $895.5M from theaters and $242.9M in cash flow from video transactions, equal to 73% of its $1.55B in release costs. True Grit helped with domestic returns covering 134% of its $90.9M in release costs. The Weinstein Co followed with 11 films that generated $102.2M from theaters and $49.0M from home video, 70% of its $215.1M in release costs. Its top title was The King’s Speech, with a 216% return on $50.2M in release costs. Among other studios, Warner Bros also beat the industry average with a 67% return followed by DreamWorks Animation (61%) and Disney (58%). Low budget films dominate the top performing films. They include IFC Films’ Cave Of Forgotten Dreams (941% on $455,000 in release costs), Warner Bros’ Hubble 3D (754% on $2.8M), Fox Searchlight’s Another Earth (429% on $488,000), Producers Distribution’s Senna (258% on $557,000), and Rogue Pictures’ Catfish (258% on $1.6M). Top major releases included Universal’s Bridesmaids (243% on $73.9M) and Disney’s The Help (238% on $66.9M). Kagan says the annual study was based on an analysis of 450 films released on DVD/Blu-ray in 2011."


My mantra is still 'produce as inexpensively as possible, produce a product that can be distributed worldwide and carve out self-distribute rights from any contract'. In this digital age of online sales, self distribution is easily accomplished.  Perhaps the studios should consider this as well.

Social Media 101

Keeping up with your social media can be overwhelming.  It takes dedication and constant attention, yes, but there are shortcuts. And once you learn them, keeping up with your social media will be like brushing your teeth, you can check on it once in the morning and once at night and and every once in awhile you will do a thorough flossing.

I recently attended a seminar on social media put on by Josh Ochs of MediaLeaders.com.  He made it look so easy.  Well, I have been putting his notes to a test with my clients sites that I maintain, and it all is very logical.  By the way, I am only now getting to my own social media revamping, and its been two months, so don't be too hard on yourself.  At least you are now thinking about what you have to do by reading this blog :)

Here's some tips I learned:

1) At the bottom of your emails add in your URL's to your FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Blog. For example:  "Find me on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/tracybalsz".  Always use the "http://" in the description as this will add an automatic hyperlink.

2) Messaging:  Pre-plan your messaging for a week or a month in advance.  Always ask yourself what does your customer Love/Hate/Fear/Annoy/Worst Enemy/Best Friend/Positive Force or Belief/Negative Force or Belief/Hero and what social networks are they on?  Create five answers to each question above and this will provide content for your messaging.

3) Best to form your messaging in 140 characters or less so that it will work on Twitter and Facebook alike.  Include an image, question, call to action or link on every post.  Keep messaging "light, bright, and polite".  Best to post galleries of pics, not just one.  They tend to be viewed more often.

4) How often should you post?  Facebook once per day.  Check back 30 minutes after a post to see if you need to answer any comments.  Twitter you should post several times a day.

Sample:

                                               i.     830A – Quote

                                              ii.     930A – Ask general questions for engagement (no promotion)

                                            iii.     1030A - Retweet answer include @sign

                                            iv.     1230P – Retweet something light, bright and polite from other users

                                              v.     130P – Ask a specific question about something new and link to your site

                                            vi.     330P – repeat the morning quote for afternoon followers

                                           vii.     530P – repeat general question for afternoon followers

5) Need more education:

http://www.medialeaders.com has a fantastic training program that you can do at your own pace, for a monthly fee.  And it is always being updated with new, trending info.

Sign up for emails from Hubspot.com.  A great blog for some fantastic information on social media.  http://blog.hubspot.com/blog

I handle the social media on numerous client accounts routinely.  You can do this yourself, I promise!