Comments, observations and thoughts from two bloggers on applied statistics, higher education and epidemiology. Joseph is an associate professor. Mark is a professional statistician and former math teacher.
I came across this table from Wikipedia, and it got me thinking about how the Bond franchise provides an excellent case study of the economics of Hollywood over the past sixty years.
[Note: budgets and box office are corrected to 2005 dollars despite the films going to 2021.]
Both movie budgets and box office are deeply flawed metrics even before you factor in Hollywood accounting, but they they are often pretty much the best we have. Any discussion of motion pictures as a business has to start here and any discussion of cultural impact has to at least take these things into consideration.
One useful way of framing the discussion is to ask, for every dollar put into this film, how many dollars in box office would it bring in? (not the formal accounting definition of ROI, but close enough for our purposes here).
Return on investment is a very poor metric for individual low budget films. When your denominator is that low, it's not that difficult to get a really big number now and then. For that reason we should probably ignore Dr No and possibly From Russia with Love and even Goldfinger. From Thunderball on, however, the Bond films became a big budget franchise given the standards of the time. We can definitely learn something looking at ROI from that point on. (One of the remarkable things about the series is how expensive
those first three films look, particularly given the special effects of
the day and the fact that even big budget movies still used embarrassing
rear screen projection.)
With the exception of Bond which came about a decade earlier, franchises
before the blockbuster era (which started in the 1970s) tended to follow patterns of slowly diminishing returns. You would possibly start out with
one or two big budget films but sequels as a rule would become more
modest. Those that did not simply fade away settled into a low-to-medium
budget equilibrium. Of the many reasons you could argue the Bond films
invented the modern blockbuster franchise, one is
how it introduced the practice of ramping up budgets following
successful installments.
On the whole, the budgets for the franchise provide a pretty good
example of how Hollywood has approached major releases with sharp growth kicking in over the past twenty or so years. In retrospect, the industry looks remarkably well disciplined before 1990. Even the notorious Heaven's Gate which went almost four times over
budget only clocks in at slightly under $160 million in 2022 dollars, which would put it squarely in the middle of the pack for a big budget film these days.
While it would take a serious analysis to actually nail this down, it certainly appears that while box office numbers have been spectacular, return on investment for big pictures has been in steady decline for a few decades. That is certainly the case with Bond.
As a follow-up to my prior discussion on housing supply due to this article, I want to discuss a more delicate topic. Canada has an aggressive immigration target at the federal level. Immigration is good. You always want to the country that ambitious people move to and create new wealth in. It creates economic growth, supports old age pension plans, and helps bring in an important diversity of perspectives to allow for fast and effective growth. It is good.
But it needs to be properly supported. The conservative idea that the people who live in a neighborhood should have the ability to shape how it changes in character is a serious problem. It is not that any one place resisting change is a problem or that any specific rule is bad, it is a slow and cumulative effect. Mark has this example of a rule that will not great, really isn't making a big impact in this instance and the net effect of this specific tax policy is a good approximation of zero.
Let me give an example. When I first visited Winnipeg I was shocked by the traffic. Everything was slow and congested -- key arteries were simply on the verge of being nonfunctional in the winter (adding ice to construction and congestion). Then the pandemic hit and driving, in the very same places, was just fine. Almost pleasant. The drop in traffic volume made for massively faster commutes and far better user experiences when doing basic tasks like parking. Then the traffic came back and the problems returned.
Which car was it that tips the system over? Which short sighted infrastructure decision was it? None of them.
Instead it was a collection of small decision, all justifiable, and all made with an intent to be sensitive to communities.
But there is a housing shortage and a large planned immigration coming. All of a sudden, you have the problem that 500,000 new Canadians (per year) need a place to live. That's a 1.3% annual population growth from immigration alone. Greater efficiency of existing housing could clearly absorb this for a year, or two years . . . But eventually, realistic plans for new housing have to exist.
Unless the laws of geometry change, that involves more density in existing settlements, expanding the borders of settlements (sprawl), or creating new settlements. The first involves changing the character of at least some neighborhoods. The second involves accepting traffic jams. The third involves finding new sources of employment for these new places. All of them require an alignment of goals between the different levels of government.
Again, no single rule is bad and many are good. But there does need to be a plan that avoids increasing Canadian homelessness and that, to be blunt, requires homes.
The professional journal IEEE Spectrum published a more-detailed review in 2020, discussing the kit in the context of the history of science education kits and safety concerns. It described the likely radiation exposure as "minimal, about the equivalent to a day’s UV exposure from the sun", provided that the radioactive samples were not removed from their containers, in compliance with the warnings in the kit instructions.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published a brief article on the web, which featured Voula Saridakis, a curator at the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago) hosting a detailed video tour of the Atomic Energy Lab components. She concluded by saying that the kit failed to sell because of its high price, and not due to any safety concerns at the time.
Twitter has been discussing homelessness after the recent Jerusalem Demsas article which really places the blame for homelessness on housing costs and supply. I am not completely convinced that asset inflation and the rise of the REIT has not accelerated an underlying problem, but it is becoming beyond doubt that this is an important part of the picture and one that imposes enormous social costs.
The inflection point in this graph is alarming. It is clear that zoning in Canadian cities, for example, favors detached housing (60% of the area of Toronto) which limits the ability of the market to build enough housing.
The small-c conservative belief that people who already live in a community should have veto power over changes to it has wormed its way into liberal ideology. This pervasive localism is the key to understanding why officials who seem genuinely shaken by the homelessness crisis too rarely take serious action to address it.
I would instead tend to say that it is the elites in these locations that are important; few people in poverty are going to be upset that house prices are not going up. Instead it is the need to appeal to middle class homeowners that is the issue. And, honestly, this suggests that a lot of the solution is to push the decisions about zoning much further up the political ladder. We see some early signs of this in California.
The truth is that we need to stop worrying about preserving neighborhood character and accept that things change. Here is Ken White talking about losing an online space he had once valued. It is the same for cities. All of places I loved when I first lived in Seattle are gone (university village Barnes and Noble, Half price books, Bauhaus cafe, Wayward Coffeehouse, Northgate mall, The Dreaming comics) and that is with the keeping of single family zoning. Living places need to grow, evolve, and change.
I just hope we can allow the growth before the homelessness crisis gets any worse.
Remember yesterday, when we talked about Musk suspending Elon's Jet, the automated twitter account that posted publicly available data about the flight plans of Musk's private jet. James Fallows (himself a pilot) walks us through the details.
1/n Here's
something about flying "general aviation" airplanes— basically
everything but airliners or the military, from tiny crop dusters to big
corporate jets.
Most of what you do is *public information.* Registration and tail numbers of airplanes. Certificate info on pilots.
The jet-setting was something Musk would rather people not talk about -- It doesn't go with the whole monastic planet warrior thing -- so we all knew he'd look for an excuse to kill it. What he came up with was an unverified claim of stalking that didn't seem to have anything to do with the flight tracker
Hard to know
what possible case Musk cld have against this kid, though he cld use his
billions to try to crush him w frivolous actions. And what possible
connection does plane tracking have to this purported attack on his car?
https://t.co/KdmjzMOKHQ
2/ LAX is like a whole city. The idea that you can know a private jet landed there and have any idea where that person is or where their car is leaving the airport or anything like that is totally absurd.
The Twitter debacle *might* be a good thing in the long run, as it is a stark reminder that no private company should be trusted to be the "public square".
Invest in platforms you control or that you can easily migrate away from (with your audience). https://t.co/0fbg7xUvaO
There's A LOT going on here that will/should prompt advertisers to flee. It includes Musk:
1) mocking trans folks 2) pushing anti-vax garbage 3) being celebrated by anti-vax leader RFK Jr 4) calling for Fauci to be prosecuted 5) fully transforming into an alt right goon pic.twitter.com/8NZ54XPJ4z
There seems to
be little limit to Elon Musk's predatory and malevolent nature. He is
now insinuating that the fmr head of Trust & Safety at Twitter, an
openly gay Jewish man, is a pedophile. Just another level of this is
that Roth actually stayed on for several weeks under Musk.. pic.twitter.com/hTHZ6SNQEO
Another reminder that, yes, he (or perhaps it should be He) really does talk that way, and not just on twitter.You ought to hear him on the TED stage.
Social media in general, especially Twitter, were eroding civilization. If civilization collapses before Mars becomes self-sustaining, then nothing else matters.
— Rumpole the Brief 🇺🇲🇺🇦 (@WendellSherk) December 14, 2022
Weird how all these too-online nerds who supposedly studied science have religious apocalyptic visions of the future and DELUDED savior complexes. https://t.co/GKIZhfCjed
Musk embracing QAnon and the alt-right gives the New York Times a chance to run another "Neo-Nazi's rantings are more nuanced than you think" piece, but it's not one of their better ones.
The most laughable claim in this consistently off-the-mark analysis is that Musk's actions are somehow "improving the image of his new $44 billion property."/1 https://t.co/LzazLfomBx
I was remined by a Twitter user that I wrote this (very critical) post about Jeremy Peters of the New York Times in 2014. https://t.co/Ti6D5m30h1 Eight years later, it holds up pretty well, I think.
While reading the following thread, pay close attention to Marshall's points and remember that Elon lies a lot.
The creator of the account has a screenshot of a slack message by Ella Irwin, Twitter Trust And Safety head requesting that his account be visibly filtered. Three days later, it's banned. https://t.co/ZyOZcF0Pyv
2/ jet tracking doesn’t identify a car or where the car is or who owns the cars. It tells you a plane has landed at an airport, which basically tells you jack. Like maybe this car incident happened but did it have anything to do with this kid?
2/ is absurd. This is publicly available information. You can go to a flight tracking site and find this information in seconds. Anyone who has the slightest interest in harming anyone can easily get that info. Anyone who just wants to show up at an airport and flip Elon ...
Elon Musk shouting "I'm rich, bitch," while the sound people at Chappelle's show honk a horn to drown out the boos from the crowd is one of the saddest videos I've ever seen. https://t.co/tJHFRhKU3wpic.twitter.com/SeeLSZG93h
DeSantis announces a new anti-CDC: "Our CDC, at this point, anything they put out, you just assume, at this point, that it's not worth the paper it's printed on ... we're creating what we're calling the Public Health Integrity Committee." pic.twitter.com/BZTu2ljzZL
Make no mistake, this is ALL about his primary opponent, who pushed to get these vaccines out at “warp speed” - Donald John Trump. This is his main wedge issue for him with the anti-vax MAGA base regarding Trump. pic.twitter.com/sExJBcITvr
It's been very, very obvious Ron DeSantis was courting the anti-vaccine movement. The pro-vaccine conservatives chose to deny this fact rather than try to stop it. It's a case study in the conservative movement's intellectual dysfunction. https://t.co/rhsRsh1F1z
DeSantis screams that covid vaccines are unsafe, and the pro-vaccine right keeps pretending he's just attending to process issues. Textbook sanewashing. https://t.co/P5puxZRrtr
This is all based on AP Votes Cast, which is (despite its name) a poll. And it’s an outlier poll when it comes to young voters. Exits showed Dems +30 with voters under 30. https://t.co/3qv22120gN
In cities such as Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Cleveland, etc., Black voters disproportionately voted early, and disproportionately used drop boxes—allowing them to avoid the long lines they often face on Election Day or voting in-person early.
Just because the election is over does mean this story should go away.
Maternal death
rates in states that restricted abortion were 62% higher than in states
where abortion was more easily accessible, new research showed. https://t.co/X0traGOP1s
This acknowledgment that *Attacking Teachers From Every Angle Is Not the Way to Improve Schools* matters because Edsall has long been a mouthpiece for the education reform wing of the Democratic party https://t.co/UhuZWZHFu8
I’m sorry this person experienced distressing symptoms, however, it’s irresponsible to say she overdosed on fentanyl by touching a dollar bill, especially since that is scientifically impossible. Pleading for help & gasping for air are the opposite of what is seen in fentanyl OD. pic.twitter.com/RVj9h06iT6
I guess "stop disputing my paper, I'll send you to prison" is at least a novel response. Who needs open scientific debate when you can silence your critics by throwing them in jail???
If you don’t mind that, from time to time, that calculator gives you answers that look right but that are most definitely wrong. https://t.co/2BsKTj1FDW
Looking at the output of a deep learning model trained on human-generated data and believing the model is "intelligent" in the human sense is exactly like looking at motion-captured CG and believing the characters on the screen are "alive".
- reversed organ death in pigs - made the first embryo from stem cells - made a pan-influenza vaccine - saw the beginning of time - got best-ever results from cancer & obesity therapy trials - maybe cracked the case of multiple sclerosishttps://t.co/U24emm7aoA
Since the following is critical of this post by Josh Marshall, I should start by pointing out that the main thrust of his post, an analysis of the implosion a few years ago of the news industry, is sharp, insightful, and on target. Definitely a must read if you have any interest in the topic.
Where Marshall goes off track is in his comments on the state of the streaming industry.[Problem areas emphasized.]
You
may have noticed that storied Disney CEO Bob Iger is back in his old
job after successor Bob Chapek was unexpectedly fired last month, the
corporate equivalent of a drumhead trial and summary execution. The
issues at Disney are partly the bearish stock market, partly Chapek’s
poor performance. But the central issue is managing Disney’s
transformation or attempted transformation into a streaming behemoth.
You may already subscribe to Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu or AppleTV.
If you do, maybe you’ll sign up for one or two more such services. But
not more than that. There’s been a furious competition to be one of
those one or two more. Under his long tenure at Disney, Iger made a
series of acquisitions — Marvel, the Star Wars franchise, Fox
entertainment and more — that made that plausible. Now the future of
Disney as a streaming business is in question and that is a central
reason why Iger is back.
Normally I wouldn't make such a big deal over this, but Marshall's comments reflect the conventional wisdom and there are few subjects on which conventional wisdom has been so consistently and entirely wrong about as it has been with the future of streaming. If you go back 8 or 10 years and read all of the major publications on the subject, you will see that virtually every major assumption and prediction has been proven comically off base.
One of the standard tenets was that Netflix was on track to become both vertically integrated and the absolute leader with substantial monopolistic power. We'll get to the vertical integration later. How about the market dominance?
Disney reported
results for the final quarter of its 2022 fiscal year today, revealing a
total of 164.2 million Disney+ global subscribers, an increase of 12
million subs from 152.1 million in Q3. The flagship streaming service was only expected to gain 9.35 million subs.
Across
Disney’s streaming services, Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ had a combined
total of 235.7 million subscribers, up from 221 million in the third
quarter. The company beat expectations of 233.8 million.
“2022 was
a strong year for Disney, with some of our best storytelling yet… and
outstanding subscriber growth at our direct-to-consumer services, which
added nearly 57 million subscriptions this year for a total of more than
235 million,” said Bob Chapek, chief executive officer, The Walt Disney
Company, in the letter to shareholders.
We could go back and forth on whether comparing Netflix to the Disney
bundle is the most valid approach -- there's no right answer to that one
-- but you can't really talk about an "attempted transformation into a streaming behemoth."
Chapek is a textbook Peter Principle idiot, but Disney is, by at least
one reasonable metric, the biggest streaming service and if you believe
the standard narrative about first mover advantage and the market only
supporting only two or three platforms, running this division at a loss
for a while is perfectly defensible.
But we need to throw in an important bit of context here.
While most of the money and virtually all of the attention goes to 'originals,' viewers mainly spend their time watching older shows. Pretty much all of the subscription based services other than Netflix, and AppleTV have large, often huge catalogs. Even Amazon, which is pursuing a partnership-based model, jumped in with MGM. Not only has Netflix never shown any interest in acquiring existing catalogs; many of its originals such as House of Cards and She-Ra actually belong to other companies. When Disney spends big money on the Mandalorian, it will cashing in on baby Yoda for years; When Netflix spends big money on the new Airbender show, Paramount will be cashing in for years.
If Netflix had such an overwhelming lead, this might not matter that much. If the company had effective monopsony power over the streaming industry, the studios would have to play ball, but that is not and very probably will never be the case, which leaves Netflix, of all the platforms, by far the most dependent on its competitors. (If you go back eight or ten years, that monopsony assumption was a fundamental part of the standard narrative, It didn't make sense then either.)
None of this means that Netflix is doomed. It's a well-run company with a viable business model as long as things stay basically the same. It is, however, unlikely that Netflix will make it to a final duopoly in anything like its current form. (And, no, the company will never catch up with its competitors' catalogs simply by producing new content, and it doesn't really appear to be trying to.)
But what about the very possibility of a duopoly?
With a handful of exceptions, the major studios (and now, to a limited degree, Amazon) have long controlled every major title, character and franchise you can think of that's not in the public domain, and these are where the money is. Even shows in their fifties and sixties like Andy Griffith and MASH absolutely crush hits like the Crown in terms of viewership. Reboots, sequels and spinoffs of often decadesold IP are among the biggest 'new' shows.
Disney was the 800 lb gorilla in intellectual property even before the Fox merger (which was an enormous anti-trust violation, but that's a topic for another post), but valuable properties are spread out among all the majors. Disney, WB, Paramount, Universal, and possibly Columbia all have big enough catalogs to demand some kind of seat at the streaming table.
This doesn't rule out consolidation down to two or three platforms but it does complicate the situation. These four or five have and --barring further studio mergers -- will continue to have content that is essential for the paid streaming industry if it wants to continue being a one-stop-shop. With purely ad-supported platforms nipping at their heels, the subscription services can't afford to chase a large part of their audience to cable or niche streamers or some à la carte option.
A Netflix/Amazon duopoly supported by a small cartel of suppliers might actually be better for consumers than what we have now, but they would be nothing like the vertically integrated behemoths that everyone was predicting a few years ago. If anything, it would be closest to the dynamic of broadcast television before deregulation when the networks were prevented from favoring their own studios.
As for the troubles at Disney, I think Marshall underestimates how much of a rake-stepping idiot Chapek proved to be, walking into political minefields that a competent CEO would have seen a mile off (see the video below), spectacularly screwing up major releases ("the worst opening for a Disney Animation Thanksgiving title in modern times"), spending big money on tons of streaming originals that got lost in the shuffle due to oversupply and bad marketing. Other than solid profits for the parks, perhaps the only accomplishment he has to boast about is Disney+/Hulu/ESPN passing Netflix.
Is "the future of Disney as a streaming business" in question? If we are talking about getting out of streaming entirely, then the answer is obviously no. Will there be some rethinking of strategy and goals? One would certainly hope so. There's plenty of room for cost cutting, much of it low hanging fruit. They could stop trying to maintain Hulu and Disney Plus as more or less autonomous platforms and roll them up together, perhaps with the latter as a premium tier for the former. They could start licensing more of their less valuable properties which would bring in a great deal of revenue (Paramount brings in 6 1/2 billion or so a year following this strategy) In addition to the money, broader licensing is a good way of raising the profile of these lesser properties without crowding out the shows you are trying to push.
For the record, Disney never should have been allowed to accumulate most of this IP. Congress should have stood up for the public domain and against the studio's lobbyists when copyrights were due expire and the Justice Department should have blocked the Fox merger, but they didn't and any analysis worth listening to is going to take these facts into account.
