An Open Letter to the Movie and TV Industries

I would have a lot more sympathy for the whining and woes of movie and television companies if they didn't so stubbornly and childishly insist on not keeping up with the times.  They fight tooth and nail against technological advancement rather than just embracing the realities of it, including all the amazing and wonderful things it can do, and shift their business paradigm to thrive in the new century. 

Instead, they keep blundering in their attempts to fight the future.  So you end up with copy protection that doesn't do much to stop pirating (as it's always three steps behind what's readily available online) and just ends up making the people who actually paid to rent movies legally feel cheated, at best, by denying special features and screwed, at worst, by making them sit through 10-20 minutes of unskippable commercials and trailers, some of which can't even be fast-forwarded through.  Oh, and should you actually go out and buy one of these movies, there's a good chance it won't play on your gaming console, laptop, desktop or anything else that isn't solely a DVD player.

As for the television industry, I've got some news for you.  Streaming, not so much a fad.  It's a staple and the way of the future.  Lots of people, more every day, are using their DVRs, Hulu, Netflix and tons of other perfectly legal sites to watch your shows, for which you get paid heartily for the rights (I'm not even getting into how you keep trying to screw over actors and crew out of their share, as everyone remembers the painful writer's strike from a few years back.) 

So, rather than creating a program that tracks unique views of shows on said sites and incorporating them into your ratings calculations, giving you a much more accurate gauge than you've EVER had of viewer interest for targeted marketing, you cling stubbornly only to the first TV air ratings and cancel shows which appeal to your biggest market-share, the tech-savvy generations. 

Oh, and because YOU won't change the way you measure these things, you try to make sure people watch that first airing the old-fashioned way by punishing people who want to watch it via streaming because, you know, they have lives.  They're still watching your shows.  Raptly.  But should they miss an episode of something on, say, Syfy, they can't watch it through any (legal) online means past the first four of a given season until thirty days after the original airing. So there's no catch-up and hey, guess what?  You just lost that household's legal viewing for the rest of the season.  Way to go.

Then you have companies like HBO or Showtime, whose intelligent programming is like water in the desert to people sick of the reality shows and dumbed down fodder of the network landscape, where quality, though it exists, is increasingly hard to find.  So what do they do to make sure these young, educated people can enjoy their shows?  They require a cable subscription.  To verify that you're subscribed to their channel.  To watch their shows, streaming, on your computer.  Which runs on a separate system, altogether.  I personally know lots of people who would pay a reduced rate, or even an episode by episode rate, to watch just the streaming.  But no, it's the way it's always been or no way at all.  I guess all the smart people at HBO are working in the writing department, hm?

Things move quickly, these days.  Ten years ago, cell phones were just becoming commonplace.  Social networking wasn't really a thing.  Music was still primarily confined to plastic discs.  Speaking of, take note, TV and movie industries, of how well not changing with the times worked out for the music industry, which is now more of a sad joke than anything else among my generation because of their stubborn refusal to re-invest in new technology even as their inevitable doom grew ever closer.  Of course, the same can be said for certain other industries, too...  ::cough:: Energy ::cough::