Fergie's Tech Blog

Snakes on the Web: 'Embrace the Future, Sucka!'

Patrick Goldstein writes a really, really savvy piece in his LA Times entertainment column, The Big Picture:

In the 1950s, as today, theaters were under siege, their audience being lured away by a dazzling new technology. Today's competition comes from the Internet, computer games and home entertainment centers. Then the enemy was television. "How do you compete with free?" theater owners moaned, the same mantra we've heard from record executives complaining about unauthorized file sharing.

My response has always been the same: You've got to embrace the future. Maybe I feel so comfortable preaching this particular gospel because I remember what Sid and Mitchell did when faced with the scary new technology of their day: They took a big chunk of their theater profits and started Miami's first TV station. Not only didn't it ruin their original business, but when their company was sold off after their deaths, the TV station was far more valuable than the theater chain.

Unfortunately, when it comes to embracing new technology, most people in showbiz are in deep denial. In his recent state of the industry speech at ShoWest, Motion Picture Assn. of America chief Dan Glickman offered the tired bromide of a "Got Milk"-style campaign to promote theater attendance. National Assn. of Theater Owners chief John Fithian gloated over the failure of "misguided experiments" in same-day release of movies on DVD and in theaters.

posted by Fergie @ 3/28/2006 12:28:00 PM