Depends on your definition of “cleaning up”

May 19, 2009 · Posted in Everything else · Comments Off

: Cover of Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon)

A bit of pop culture this morning. Ross Douthat, the newly appointed token conservative on the New York Times‘ op-ed page, chimes in on the Dan Brown phenomenon (“Da Vinci Code,” “Angels and Demons”). The entire column seems to be a jeremiad against “post-modern” Christianity and religiosity, which is itself quaint and deserving of fuller discussion. But he starts off with an exaggeration (to put it mildly) in his first sentence:

The movie treatment of his novel, “Angels and Demons,” is cleaning up at the box office this week.

See, the problem is, “Angels and Demons” didn’t “clean up” at the box office at all.

A&D made $46,204,168 in its opening weekend as the only major picture opening this weekend. But “Star Trek,” which opened last weekend, made $43,034,547, only $3 million less than A&D. Compared to other summer releases so far, A&D paled in comparison to the opening weekends of “Star Trek” ($75,204,289) and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” ($85,058,003).

A&D also paled in comparison to its predecessor, “The DaVinci Code” which made $77,073,388 in its first weekend of release in 2006. In fact, it couldn’t even beat the opening gross for the second “Chronicles of Narnia” which opened on the same weekend in 2008 with $55,034,805.

What’s more, A&D will likely plummet this weekend as it faces stiff competition from the latest “Terminator” release, and the “Night at the Museum” sequel.

With an estimated budget of $150 million, $48 million on opening weekend is hardly “cleaning up.”

“Angels” U.S. opening may not be so heavenly (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
Angels & Demons Wins Box Office (shoppingblog.com)
Weekend Box Office: ‘Demons’ Barely Beats Out ‘Trek’ (cinematical.com)

Tags: no tags

Random Idea: Newspaper Tycoon

May 8, 2009 · Posted in Random Ideas · Comments

: Image via Wikipedia

The other day driving to the ACES convention in Minneapolis, I was thinking about journalism and gaming, and the problems of the news industry. So many people are proposing new ideas, or bemoaning the moves made by industry titans. But what do we really know?

I’d love to see how much a major newspaper chain spends on various cost centers (printing, distribution, sales, management, editorial, etc.), and then see how those cost centers could be managed to make a reasonable profit without gutting the editorial division.

Which is when it hit me: Newspaper Tycoon. I’ve seen several versions of the Playstation/PC game “Railroad Tycoon,” and when I was just out of college, I got wrapped up in the SimCity craze when it came to the Macintosh.

So why couldn’t someone create a version of that “real-world” simulation for newspapers (or any media in this crazy environment)?

Imagine being offered the chance to purchase family-owned newspapers, and trying to juggle the debt created by such purchases, and figuring out how to survive the Internet cuts in your classified income. Trying to come up with new ways to boost circulation, dealing with labor strife, advertiser complaints over negative coverage, etc.

What lessons could be learned from such a game that had accurate figures that depicted the real business decisions that have to be made, and the competing “stakeholder” commitments that newspaper execs have to deal with.

I think it’s a good idea. And it would also help with anyone who wanted to teach or take a “business of journalism” class. Maybe this has already been developed, and I’m just not aware of it. If so, please let me know in the comments. Otherwise, it’s an idea that I’m giving away for free.