Image Source: mamadrama.com
Less and less people go to theaters nowadays. Ticket price is hiking so do the gas price. More ‘long tail’ contents like PSY’s ‘Gungnam Style’ are pulling people’s attention here and there. What I observed is a role shift of the theater from ‘main-stream-cheap-no-brainer’ choice of weekend entertainment to upscale-expensive-optimized-experience once several months. Why? Because cheaper substitutes emerge, with Netflix, Hulu, etc. on the service side and smartphone, tablet, smart TV, LTE on the hardware side. And content is shifting from a mass market dominating ‘hit economy’ to a more commoditized ‘long tail economy’, leading by the prevalence of Youtube, Vimeo, and thousands of user created contents.
Old business case needs retooling and new models need to be invented.
Forgive me if I’m being too dramatic on this, but like Charles Dickens put it:
_ ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’._