In 1948, when only one in ten Americans had seen a TV, Time magazine sized up the new medium. Its quiz shows, cooking lessons and vaudeville were perfectly watchable, it said, but the films were awful. “The ancient cabbages that are rolled across the telescreen every night are Hollywood’s curse on the upstart industry,” it wrote. “Televiewers, sick of hoary Hoot Gibson oaters and antique spook comedies, wonder when, if ever, they will see fresh, first-class Hollywood films.”Sixty years have not done much to alter Tinseltown’s instincts. As it prepares for its 80th Academy Awards this weekend, Hollywood is facing another new medium — the internet. Instead of using the web to get films to people, studios are still in the cabbage-rolling business: they use the web mostly as a medium to show dross, and just a handful of decent films. Yet, if the studios hope that by ignoring the web, Tinseltown can put off change, they are surely wrong (see article). Hollywood needs to confront the web — by embracing it.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10723360