I’m going to tell you a little secret: Hollywood is in a state of panic (it’s also in California, but that’s another issue). Those of you who have been paying attention have surely noted that the new media is moving at warp speed. Now you could say, in the studios’ defense, that this rapid turn of events has been, well, rapid, but the Dawn of the New Media has been predicted since Amazon.com sold its first book.
Hollywood has been actively digitizing product for years now. Every studio has been scrubbing and remastering and relicensing music in anticipation of a digital windfall. Maybe it’s that DVD has been so dominant, so profitable for so long, but the studios remain unprepared for the future. Item Number Ten on the Absolute Value analysis of Google’s Analyst Slide Show asks the question that has Hollywood biting its nails:
Do you know exactly how many assets you have? By assets, I mean all the content you’ve ever owned or created. Do you know exactly? Do you have the count? (Remember, I’m a computer scientist. I have to ask these things.)
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