ABSTRACT
Introduction This book provides an overview of how the business side of the television and motion picture industry works. By the end of the text, readers will gain a practical understanding of how a film, television, or video project moves from concept to making money. Stars make the headlines, but marketing and distribution convert content into cash. To explain how the system works, this book charts the path that entertainment content takes from development to financing to distribution, and attempts to demystify the submarkets through which a production is exhibited, sold, watched, rented, or otherwise consumed. In summary, this book explains the process by which a single idea turns into a unique piece of entertainment software capable of generating over a billion dollars and sustaining cash flow over decades. I will also attempt to put into context the growing array of Internet and other new media opportunities that are altering how we watch content and blurring the lines of how we define categories of media. Since the publication of my first edition, the introduction and mass adoption of tablets, along with the emergence of apps, has accelerated the trend toward on-the-go and on-demand access to the point where digital distribution systems have moved from being labeled as disruptive to representing the future of the market. What I will explore in this book, and what all media companies continue to struggle
with, is why it is so challenging to make as much (if not more) money through these new avenues as traditional outlets.
