I don’t know when the Hollywood trades are going to wake up and realize that it’s a new day in this town.
The Hollywood Reporter was recently out beating the bushes for ads to fill a Sylvester Stallone special edition to match the "Visionary Award" they gave him.
No offense, Sly, but seriously?
I’m reliably told that the studios are resentful at being hit up for this kind of neanderthal nonsense. Most of them turned it down. A couple were guilted into it — that same old Hollywood trade game.
The Hollywood establishment has moved on from this kind of model and I’m surprised to see the new management at THR playing this old game.
But a lot hasn’t changed despite the arrival of e5. I was at a newstand at LAX this weekend and noticed that the Hollywood Reporter’s international edition was on sale.
For the embarrassingly non-bargain price of $5.99 you could get a thin, glossy retread of news I’d seen elsewhere. There were Emmy season ads and — I promise you– nothing to read.
For the same amount of money, I bought Wired magazine and had a great geek-read on how Pixar works. I skipped what probably would have been a great read of the New Yorker’s summer fiction, and instead picked up the Economist for $6.99 to dive deep into their analysis of American’s right-wing.
I’m a broken record on this point: you cannot keep serving up the same, mediocre news stories and expect readers to pay for them.
And you can’t keep plying the same tired advertising wares and hope that the easy money of yesteryear will come flowing in for advertorial nonsense.
