One of the favourite themes of Anderson's Long Tail thesis is that of the movie business: blockbusters are on the way out and with them the theatre cinema business. I am still somewhat skeptical of this and always on the look out for more data. I recently came across this page from the UK Film Council - their statistical year book. While I don't think it takes the argument either way, lots of interesting data to take in to consideration.
Incidentally, this is one of the cases where my dream of the data web makes finding data painful. Imagine if you could land on this page and have it link to, manipulate and compare data from Chris' blog or other sources so that you could research and investigate the data right in the browser.
Anderson's book did not state that blockbusters are on the way out. What it suggested is that there would always be a place for blockbusters, but given the choice, people will also opt to move some of their decisions further down the long tail. Thus, creating more demand for non-blockbuster titles and slightly flattening the overall shape of the curve. Instead of hits making up 95% of the market, he argues that hits will not go away, just make up a smaller percentage.
Posted by: Steven Cox | December 25, 2006 at 11:27 AM