Hollywood Hit By Financial Crisis

February 2. 2009

Hollywood has been shaken by the current financial crisis. Movie ticket sales are down, which led them to raise prices to hide the losses.

Now it has been revealed that DVD sales fell 32% and "Making a movie just won't be as profitable as it once was." Even the Hollywood tradepapers are feeling the pinch, with some wondering if only one publication will survive. 

Showbusiness is the greediest business in the world. Hollywood would do well to make revisions in their conduct.

DVD Plunge May Force Studios to Write Down Movies (Update2)

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Plunging DVD sales threaten to reduce profit for studio owners Time Warner Inc.,Walt Disney Co.,Viacom Inc. and News Corp., and may force them to write down the value of movies, analysts said.

Fourth-quarter shipments fell 32 percent in the U.S. and Canada to 453.6 million DVDs, according to Los Angeles-based Digital Entertainment Group. The drop is the biggest since the industry-funded researcher started keeping track in 1997...

“Making a movie just won’t be as profitable as it once was,” Barclays Capital analyst Anthony DiClemente in New York said in an interview. “There will be a complete bottoms-up reconstruction of the economics of the film business.”...

http://www.bloomberg.com

Recession rocks Hollywood's showbiz papers

Fri Jan 30, 2009 8:00am EST - LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - For more than 75 years, Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter have battled to be the movie industry's top newspaper, but recent layoffs due to the recession and competition from Internet blogs has Hollywood wondering if it will soon become a one paper town.

Publishers of the showbusiness newspapers say advertising has plunged, even during the current Oscar season when movie studios pay well to hype their films with cover page ads...

http://www.reuters.com