
Media: A world of hits - fnid
http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14959982&amp;subjectID=348963&amp;fsrc=nwl
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RyanMcGreal
That was not my reading of The Long Tail at all. Anderson didn't argue that
the zipf distribution was going away; rather, he argued that with collapsing
inventory and transactions costs, it is now possible to make money selling a
large number of individually-marginal items as well as a few blockbusters.

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access_denied
Yeah, I guess the writer mixed up Seth Godin's and Anderson's writings and
felt prey to a misconception. That's quality journalism for you.

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ilamont
This is excellent, but I have to wonder what happens to blockbusters when
broadcast TV and radio suffers the same fate as Time magazine, HBO, big-city
newspapers, and other former media giants and thought leaders? The reason why
many blockbusters in the music and film industry do so well is because of the
marketing power of broadcast media, in which ownership is concentrated in the
hands of a few and millions of people watch or listen to their programming --
and make viewing/listening choices based on what they see in ads and in
programs like GMA or The Late Show. When those audiences shift to niche
channels on the Internet or elsewhere, what will happen to the blockbusters
who used to enjoy such a high national profile?

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CWuestefeld
_Another way of rescuing less popular stuff is to charge more for it._

We're talking about IP, where conventional understanding of supply-and-demand
is turned on its ear because supply is effectively infinite.

But even considering that, isn't this suggestion backwards? If you've got a
product that's in high demand, shouldn't that be what you charge more for?

Doing this would allow fixed costs for less-popular products to be amortized
more quickly, and I think that would make their ROI less risky.

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Tiktaalik
Related: Modern Warfare 2 earns $550 million in five days.
[http://kotaku.com/5413847/3-billion-worth-of-call-of-duty-
so...](http://kotaku.com/5413847/3-billion-worth-of-call-of-duty-
sold?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+kotaku/full+\(Kotaku\))

The blockbuster is very healthy it seems.

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JMiao
game publishers write off plenty of AAA flops for every mw2.

