Recession Special

The axiom I’ve been hearing all around is that the Entertainment Industry increases revenues during downtimes.

I understand the basis for the theory, and perhaps if we were living in the first half of the 20th Century it would make sense.  But in our age of $11.75 tickets to see NOTHING ORIGINAL: THE SEQUEL in theaters, paired with the rapid evolution of alternate distribution channels, and crushed by the unstoppable entropy of piracy and file-sharing…

…the industry is going to need to think differently.

Unfortunately they are not.  According to a Hollywood Reporter article, this year’s crop of network television pilots is providing anything but escapism from our collective economic misfortune:

A group of friends gets fired on the same day. Troubled cops check into a halfway home. A Wall Street executive loses his job and has to reconnect with his small-town family.  Groups of single, perky young people seem to be waning.  No more friends with benefits — they’re now friends with unemployment benefits.

The irony of well-paid WGA writers channeling the strife of an average American aside, perhaps this is all a little much to inundate the CBS primetime viewers with (a sitcom called “Waiting to Die” – holy crap!).

At Plentitube we literally have thousands of ideas for programming, sourced from some of the most creative people from all over the planet.

Perhaps a little innovation could benefit both the viewer and a network’s bottom line…

~ by Jon Labes on February 25, 2009.