EKIP– Expert Club for Economics and Politics A Different Opinion
Although cinemas are declining, screenings have doubled since 2003. Ticket revenues have also seen significant growth in recent years.
The campaign, broadcast on bTV and entitled FairPlay, has caused quite controversial opinions. I would like to clarify that the lines below reflect my personal opinion as a viewer. There is nothing wrong with a private media outlet organizing its own initiatives related to causes that its management considers important. At the same time, it is essential to highlight the contradictions of the campaign itself, because it has become a PR failure.
The case of Asen Blatechki [1]: according to Wikipedia [2], the actor has taken part in 47 feature, short or documentary films or television series for the period 1993 - 2012. A quick check shows that barely less than 5% of them can be found on any of the popular torrent websites in our country. It is an undeniable fact that Blatechki's popularity has grown in recent years with the broadcast of films such as "Mila from Mars", "Footsteps in the Sand" and, of course, the television series "Glass House". According to the data published by bTV itself, over 1 million viewers watched the last episode of the series. I dare say that a great deal of credit for reaching these figures goes to the end user's internet access to content with Asen Blatechki and company. Moreover, it is not without logic to claim that the download of a video featuring Blatechki significantly increases his recognition and popularity outside the capital. He is probably at least partially aware of this fact, as evidenced by the tours undertaken in various Bulgarian cities with the theatrical productions "Skin and Sky", "Bardak", "Vrazhalets" and others.
Easy access to multimedia content helps Blatechki personally, as well as Bulgarian cinema and theater as a whole. For reference, here is the state of the sector in recent years (See Graph 1) and how Bulgarian films are performing in our cinemas (See Graph 2):
Chart 1: Number of cinemas and screenings by year
The case of Krisko [3]: he also calls for justice from the screen. In the discography of Kristian Talev-Krisko, 37 songs can be found [4], the oldest of which date back to 2007. There are also several paradoxes with this musical artist. The first of them is expressed in the fact that the most downloaded content with his participation on one of the leading torrent websites in our country is his album from 2007, entitled "Дялкам бяло" (I leave the name and content of the songs there without comment). The second and bigger paradox related to the rapper is the fact that he explained on national air how it should not be a problem for anyone to give 1 leva to buy a song [5]. In this way, Krisko refers to the Apple iTunes service, with the help of which songs can be purchased for 0.99$ per piece. A quick check there, however, shows that the only presence after searching for the artist "Krisko" is the song "Koy den stanahme" by the artists Angel and Moisey, both produced by him.
Image 1: Chriso's songs on iTunes
Here's what happens in the end:
1. Celebrities use their personalities to reach their fan base and convey a credible message. It gets to the point where artists actually insult their fans by calling them thieves and showing disrespect. As marketing guru Seth Godin would say – “This is broken!” [6].
2. The entertainment business is changing its sources of revenue under the influence of technology, consumers and market forces. 20 years ago, access to content was more difficult and the end user had no other choice to acquire it than through audio and video cassettes, television, CDs or DVDs. However, the market operates without fail and forms new channels of demand and supply - this is evidenced by services such as iTunes, the App Store, Amazon e-books, Google Play, etc. If someone wants to escape this market and be protected by means that are no longer part of the exchange of goods, in the end, they will be on the losing side.
3. There is no alternative to offer the fairplay campaign. That is, the message should be: “what you are doing is not good, you better do it like this”. At least, this is how every individual offering and promoting their product would think. The last “ like this”, however, leads nowhere and the blunder with iTunes and Crisco is proof of this. The native attempts at platforms for accessing media content with regulated copyrights against subscription are poorly designed, poorly explained and dysfunctional.
4. The strategy of many contractors to highlight the costs of their production and the difficulties they have gone through is not working. On the contrary – in any textbook on business negotiations you can read that highlighting your own costs is a sign of a lack of strong arguments. Ultimately, each individual who invests their labor resources in a given good assesses for themselves whether the investment is worth it, what the risks are, and what the return is.
5. Consumers are far from being as primitive as they are led to believe. If I like the work of an artist that I have come across, I will gladly attend his concert, performance, production or screening, and in general, I will pay to have original access to his work.
In short, consumers do not clean up years of garbage in a day, while at the same time someone is eating the ham in the fridge or stealing their car. Things are not always completely clear-cut, and artists often look for easy support in the form of a government subsidy, aid or a PR initiative that simply uses their face. In their eyes, this probably seems right and simple. And as is known, things should be as simple as possible. But no more.
BTV doesn't care about how many movies are downloaded from torrents, but rather that downloading them beats watching their television, which beats the ratings of the show/series itself, etc., which ratings are directly proportional to the money they will take from advertisers. If they are aiming for recognition of their movies and actors, in addition to the 40 minutes of commercials in the 2nd hour of Glass House, supplemented by 5 minutes of product placement, BTV should add at least 1 more hour of product placement to their series to make ends meet.
And in the article you talk about song prices on iTunes in dollars, but in the picture they are in euros.
Good point about the graphics 🙂
Otherwise, they have another wish, BTW, that there should be no competition for Voyo 🙂