The History of How We Watch Movies

I'm gonna assume that if you're watching this video you subscribe to at least one streaming platform or at the very least do you use someone else's password to access the streaming platform there are already so many and a new one seems to pop up every day after reading about yet another new service I started to think about the history of this relationship between the audience content providers and how we watch stuff the core of this relationship is actually a very logistical question literally where do studios put their content to make sure people can see it and more importantly pay for it for a long time the answer was pretty simple every single penny the film industry made went through the box-office window but in 2019 the answer is a lot more complicated our freedom to access film has varied throughout film history and like most things it's usually contingent on technologies and business strategies outside of our control audiences studios and content providers are constantly negotiating supply and demand to make films available consumers like to be entertained in the least expensive most convenient way possible studios and other content providers well they want to earn money and to varying degrees support artists or ideas but let's be honest they own businesses and they want to keep the lights on so that's what we're gonna talk about today the methods and changes in how we watch movies and why those have happened and how the benefits or drawbacks of each advantage certain party's over others virtually impossible to imagine for some of you I'm sure but for at least 30 years a theater was literally the only place you could watch a movie the exchange in that world appears pretty straightforward you go to the theater you pay for a ticket and that's it studios are happy you're happy yeah you had to leave your house but don't know any differently so was it really so inconvenient well kind of so back in the day movie studios not only produced and distributed their films but they also could actually own the theaters where films were exhibited they realized owning theaters allowed them to gain complete control over the entire film industry the logic for when and where you put a film changes when you're making money on where it's playing so let's say as a hypothetical to be clear this is a hypothetical the Disney owned AMC theaters you would naturally expect AMC to have some kind of advantage when the next Avengers movie comes out that's basically what happened studios did give advantages to their own theaters in ways that weren't exactly convenient for consumers or conducive to competition within the film industry for example they often refused to exhibit independent producers they set price minimums on tickets they would release a film to only one theater within a geographic zone to ensure that they would obtain the largest possible audience for the film and to prevent other theaters in close proximity from competing for the same customers they gave films special clearances meaning they'd play a film in one theater for a certain amount of time and then to a wider release to independent theaters later after most people had already seen it and a wide release had little value Studios also engaged in block booking which is the practice of offering a feature upon the condition that the exhibitor license a bundle of other features the idea being one or two of a group of five might be good but you ensure a return on all of them regardless of quality or box-office potential now to be clear studios didn't own every single theater only about 17% of them in fact however the vast majority of those happen to be the most important highly trafficked theaters in major markets around the country so they had an outsize financial impact for example exhibition contributed to approximately 60% of Paramount's profits from 1940 to 1948 so even though they were robbing audiences of choice and preventing independent producers from succeeding Studios really really liked owning their theaters the government however was not such a fan they saw this as anti-competitive behavior and for nearly 25 years continuously litigated this issue in court sometimes winning small victories sometimes looking the other way in exchange for favors finally the Justice Department took on eight studios for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act and found that the defendants had engaged in a widespread conspiracy to illegally fix motion picture prices and monopolize both the film distribution and movie theater markets the Supreme Court upheld this decision in u.s. versus paramount in 1948 outlawing the distribution practices I outlined earlier and mandating that studios divest from their theaters such deeply structural changes would deprive the studios of vital income so they had to take a step back and rethink how they ran their businesses in a post paramount world failure became much more expensive without block booking each film had to qualitatively stand on its own with no financial investment in theater ownership the incentive to maintain the volume of production required to run a national network of theaters disappeared as a result studios made less films per year but tried to make them better they spent more on publicity for each and used the technological advances of traditional exhibition to their advantage which partially explains why widescreen Technicolor and 3d took off but even though they had a strategy for handling all of these changes the transition wasn't easy Hollywood entered a decade-long recession four thousand theaters closed their doors and profits plummeted companies disposed of their back Lots and other assets and paired producers stars and directors from their payrolls the studio system was on its deathbed perhaps I've made the Paramount decree sound extremely destructive and don't get me wrong they were a pain in the neck for bigger studios but the truth is many more factors caused this recession than the Paramount decrees alone ultimately in terms of affordable access to quality entertainment audiences benefited from the changes and as far as independent producers were concerned decision was a distinct victory toward restoring free enterprise the number of independent producers went from just 70 in 1946 to 170 in 1957 Life magazine called it a phenomenon and a revolution and then you know TV happened in 1939 the Allied theater owners of New Jersey sent a letter to the president of RKO after the company supplied a trailer for gunga din for some television tests in Los Angeles it said you can readily understand that if our patrons are able to see a picture such as confident on their television sets at home they're not likely to come to the theater in 1939 when TVs looked like this in other words studios were keenly aware of the threat posed by television very early on in the mediums development and frankly they were right to be worried the thing most often cited as the predominant cause of declining theater revenues was television the satisfied demand for entertainment by means other than that of conventional theatres exhibition it made the business of being entertained cheaper and easier which as we've established people like plus convenience had a greater value in a post-war America that was experiencing tremendous social and economic change soldiers came home from the war the baby boom started higher disposable income meant new hobbies the expensive highway system massively grew suburban areas people were busier and farther away movies had to be big worth the time and trouble to get people out of the house as patty Callisto put it more appealing than the mediocre movie was curling up on the sofa with a bowl of homemade popcorn and watching a 30-minute escapade with Lucy and Ricky Ricardo we all get this logic most of us still exercise this logic at a certain point studios had to contend with this new reality and it became a game of survival in addition to utilizing its advanced technologies and focusing on making less but better films the studio's began a delicate balancing act how do you invest just enough to make money off of something so readily suited to your product but sabotage traditional theater exhibition and ticket sales in the process many studios invested in networks paramount for example owned stations in LA that syndicated programming to over 40 stations Studios also dabbled in original programming birthing the TV movie and shows like Disneyland which was essentially an hour-long advertisement for Disney properties as for traditional movies studios knew pretty early on that they wouldn't allow new films to air on television but they understood both a network demand for programming especially for non prime time slots and the audience demand for content they know they'd like so rather than letting their libraries of old films gather dust in a vault somewhere studios sold their pre 1948 film libraries as first indication suddenly films no one had seen in years became available to the public it didn't make theaters mad it made Studios money and most importantly in my opinion kept film history alive I can't tell you how many old interviews I've watched where stars talk about new audiences discovering their work on television access to these films helped develop America's shared cultural vocabulary and fuels Golden Age nostalgia how we think about film exhibition has only continued to expand since television became commonplace in American society and as our understanding of where and when we can watch things grows so does the value of convenience cable pay-per-view the video store all have thrived because they offer choices personalized programming and studios have kept up although hesitant at first to embrace video technology and video stores because they feared losses in revenue they learned that the afterlife of films could extend to the developing home video sphere by 1989 there were over 30,000 video stores in the US and revenue for home video superseded traditional box office stores like blockbuster allowed people to explore their own tastes revisit favorites on their own terms and meet people who could recommend new and interesting things and then someone had an idea what if you could get all that but never leave your house [Music] in 1950 TV offered entertainment by other means in 2019 streaming services offer on-demand entertainment by other means you may recall that vintage Netflix had no original programming at all the premise of the business was essentially that late fees at Blockbuster were pretty annoying so for a monthly fee they would send you any DVD you want in the mail and your life would be a whole lot easier it wasn't until 2007 that the company adopted a streaming model and not until 2013 that it premiered its first original show house of cards starring Robin Wright only since then streaming services and original programming generally have exploded nearly killing video stores in the process in 2013 blockbuster filed for bankruptcy and just under six thousand video stores remain down from thirty thousand Netflix and Amazon on the other hand are billion-dollar companies with shows and films that have won numerous major awards and yeah okay the words conversation is for another day but all this is a pretty good hint that people really like watching things this way it's given us an entirely new cultural vocabulary and Studios have definitely noticed like I said at the beginning of this video a new streaming platform seems to pop up every day Apple Disney Sundance Amazon Hulu YouTube HBO now sling shutter The Criterion Channel DirecTV now CBS all access and that's just the tip of the iceberg personalized on-demand streaming to a device in your pocket is the best possible thing audiences could hope for in terms of convenient entertainment at least until we all have chips in our brains studio owned streaming platforms are the best possible thing Studios could ask for in terms of profit at least that's what they're betting why because they're eliminating the middleman take Disney for example in 2017 Disney ended its contract with Netflix with the intention of starting its own streaming platform Disney Plus which will launch later this year Marvel's Star Wars Pixar and the Disney Vault will all have a new home and pesky Netflix won't be taking a cut of uncle Walt's money in other words studios are exercising pre paramount logic they can maximize profits by B humming their own exhibitors except now it's a nap and not a physical theater it may have taken a couple decades but they sure did figure out how to sidestep that one so even though there are more options than ever when it comes to how we're and what we watch the number of choices can feel ironically limited it's a pretty basic economic principle that people have a finite income and will limit spending on any given thing based on that income how many streaming services can a person reasonably pay for much less keep up with now I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing lord knows I love a good streaming service it genuinely took me forever to write this video because I kept getting distracted by the 90s sitcom cybill now streaming on Amazon Prime I've watched every single season of Grace and Frankie in its entirety the day it came out that would never have been possible at literally any other time in history and I love that but the reality of the streaming service conglomerate driven world is that audiences don't have as much control over their personal libraries as they want you to believe you do content can be easily withheld and it's more often than not purposely overprotected to the point that it's unavailable take for example film struck formerly the home of Indy foreign and classic films the service was shut down by Warner Media after the company's merger with AT&T 80 called film struck largely a niche service and despite protests from prominent filmmakers and widely circulated petitions it failed to see any growth opportunity for the service so that was it it was gone it was a pretty stark realization that streaming does not equal access and our standards of accessibility have changed since streaming platforms became a thing it's no longer satisfying to just happen upon a movie you like playing live on TV there is an expectation of digital availability and that's where exclusivity created by so many platforms can feel frustrating will I need to subscribe to Disney plus to watch Mary Poppins will I ever be able to convince one person to subscribe to CBS all access just so they can watch the good fight the greatest show on television as you may have gathered I like watching movies a lot and it's important to me to know where I can access in forcing stuff undoubtedly streaming services offer an unprecedented amount of control over what we watch they can be pretty great they can also be pretty frustrating some people will say that owning physical media is the answer those people have never lived in a New York City apartment with no storage space and considering the pace of Technology these days who can say how long it'll be before we're all replacing our blu-rays because that's how this goes we're constantly recalibrating our viewing habits to match new technology thankfully though with more platforms more artists are given opportunities they may not have had under a traditional studio's leadership ultimately if we want to watch good stuff if we want a vibrant film industry we're in good shape by the way the Department of Justice recently announced that it will revisit the Paramount decrees to determine whether or not we still need them even though lawsuits regarding exhibition and traditional theaters are literally still happening so keep an eye out you never know it's just around the corner at your local disney-owned AMC hi everyone thank you for watching this video especially if you normally tune in to this channel for Oscar content I promise we'll be back to regular programming soon in the meantime I just wanted to let you all know that I have updated my patreon page to have some cool new perks on there be sure to check it out and thank you so much again for watching this video

Channel: Be Kind Rewind

Views: 79,286

Rating: 4.9702711 out of 5

Keywords: netflix, hulu, amazon, apple, tv+, disney+, us vs. paramount, streaming, be kind rewind, how we watch movies, history, film, tv, i love lucy, gunga din, rko, mgm, paramount, paramount decrees

Id: FGsLhDFDmIs

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2019