ABSTRACT
In terms of industrial organisation, the studios that constitute Hollywood today should be seen primarily as financier-distributors with production shared between a host of risk-takers through more-or-less complex contractual arrangements: what Bordwell et al. have termed the ‘package-unit system’.2 Also, they have become part of larger, vertically integrated entertainment-leisure-media conglomerates.3 For Douglas Gomery, these new technologies, together with the changes in industrial organisation that have accompanied them, have strengthened rather than weakened Hollywood. He writes:
At the heart of all of the billion-dollar mergers which have created today’s Hollywood stands the realisation that this land rush for the take-over of five hundred [satellite TV] channels begins at Hollywood’s doorstep. The new wonderland of video will make money for those who own the means of production. Without libraries of moving images and regular creation of new visual narratives, the promised electronic superhighway will simply be like fancy plumbing without water.4
