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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1505412
The move will hopefully help consumers get past the possible pros and cons of HBO. Time will tell if that was a smart move, but it will require an aggressive marketing program to win consumer mindshare in an already crowded market. But it does clearly separate the company’s streaming service from former head Jason Kilar’s stumbling day-date release model. Almost no one liked the move that cost the company a ton of money to quell the unrest of directors and talent. The newly named service also differentiates the personal/home entertainment service from WBD’s theatrical commitment and rich film history. Actually, almost everyone is stepping up to commemorate 100 years of filmmaking – NAB marked their milestone with a fun, informative show in Vegas. WB is marking their’s with a year-long program of events and Disney kicked off their second 100 years in January. Our second favorite industry show (IBC) – held in Amsterdam, a town that’s a lot more fun than Vegas - will only be 56 in September; but then, it was founded perhaps appropriately in the summer of love. All of these industry milestone(s) should remind us of the value studios place on their film archives as well as the problem of reviving, rejuvenating and reshowing much of that content. We’re not certain what value Warner Bros, Disney or their shareholders place on the organization’s archives but you can bet it’s a lot. Back in 2017, Amazon paid nearly $8.5B for MGM based largely on the huge – and for the most part pretty good – content library that included more than 4,000 movies and 17,000 TV episodes. That was the same year Disney paid $71.3B for the film and TV assets of 21st Century Fox. AT&T’s Randall Stephenson thought entertainment was more exciting than stringing wire and dropped $43B for Warner but decided a reality TV guy would be better at the job and the company became WBD. In other words, the history of the global industry is worth a lot. Edwin Porter’s 1903 12-minute film The Great Train Robbery marked the beginning of Warner Bros; and thanks to the work of a lot of film preservationists and copiers, it’s still available for viewing. Much like the films we enjoy today, it had an exciting/audience-shocking ending (check Wikipedia). Unfortunately, thousands of films and shows – good and bad – haven’t been as lucky and have been lost because of fires and neglect. Back in the industry’s beginning, moving images were captured on highly flammable nitrate film and later to slightly more stable celluloid film. How flammable? Movies were initially shown from a reel and fed into a box for rewinding.