Media spending down, studios cutting back on releases
Hollywood Newsroom is now Buzz Newsroom! Visit and bookmark our new site. Buzz is bigger and better, including sports, world news, gadgets and the entertainment news that you're used to. Same staff, just more stuff! Why Fark, Drudge and Huffington when you can Buzz!?“We’re on a diet,” brags one studio chief.
He’s right, according to the latest numbers from Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Money spent by major studios on media buys dipped in 2007 to under $3.4 billion, compared with $3.5 billion in 2006.
That’s positive news for studio marketing chiefs haunted for years by escalating marketing costs. But in March, the MPAA said the average cost to market a studio release actually grew by 4%. How to explain the discrepancy between the MPAA and Nielsen?
“There are less movies,” explains David Brooks, president of worldwide marketing for Focus Features. “It doesn’t seem to me that people are spending any less on the marketing of films, and if anything, they are spending more.”
In other words, the studios’ diet consists of fewer meals but plenty of calories per serving. And that’s a concern to marketing executives.
“There is nobody I talk to in the business who isn’t under pressure to defend what is being spent to market films,” says Adam Fogelson, president of marketing and distribution for Universal. “There is more scrutiny and rigor in the financial process of how films are being marketed — and that is justified.”
- from THR