[lbo-talk] Oil, Conspiracy Theory, and F 9/11

[Dennis Redmond]

>>Mojo says F9/11 has raked in an astounding $64 million so far
>
> Maybe I spend too much time looking at the national income accounts,
> but $64m seems like such a tiny sum - not that much bigger than a
> star bond trader's year-end bonus. Hollywood makes people rich, but
> it's such a small business in dollar terms. Ditto pro sports.

It's significant in terms of sheer numbers of people -- at $15 a ticket,
we're talking a potential audience of 4.3 million people and counting. No
US documentary has ever pulled in these sorts of numbers before. Again, my
hat goes off to Michael Moore.

It's true that Leftists often forget that Hollywood is a small (and often
surprisingly progressive) piece of a very complicated and very
multinational media landscape. The real money is in advertising -- last
year, the US ad market was $120 billion, I think, or 1.1% of US GDP. (Half
of that was in print advertising, incidentally, proving that the death of
the text is highly exaggerated). That's more than ten times larger than
total US box office revenues in 2003, which were about $10 billion.

-- DRR