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March 08, 2010

RIP Variety.

Just hours after trying to pass off the notion that a $400,000 ad buy for a never-gonna-get-there Oscar chaser was not all that important to Variety, the elder statesman of movie trade magazines, for all intents and purposes, acknowledged that they were done being anything more than a blog with a long pre-web history (that they don't know how to exploit). And they did it under cover of the Oscars, apparently hoping that the story wouldn't gain traction with so many so distracted by the Oscars and their immediate aftermath.

Apparently, the rest of the entertainment media hasn't much paid attention to what's been going on at Variety for the last couple of years. This Oscar-time dump of talent started last year when Anne Thompson was shown the door because her cost outweighed her ability to generate an ad bump and because Variety, like most of us, had a weak Phase II. Also heading out the door was top utility man, Mike Jones and editor Michael Speier. Also leaving because the cutbacks on the number of reviews and price paid for them was so severe, Bob Koehler. And of course, Peter Bart is now floating out there, part of the company, but not.

Variety cut most of its free Academy member subscriptions, without notice in April - the paper just stopped showing up - and would start them up again - also without notice - in October... in time to claim that they were serving the Academy base for which studios buy ads.

In the meanwhile, another phenomenon occurred in the growth or start-up of Nikki Finke and Sharon Waxman's The Wrap. Both previously discarded, disrespected, and disliked reporters were trying to exploit the perceived weakness of the trades with their new sites. Both claimed to be seeking a higher calling than the trades. But amazingly, both seem to have become more gossipy, less thorough, but hard-charging versions of The Trades... and little more.

Finke had become a somewhat known quantity, specializing in screeds that made the most powerful in town quake in their boots like puppies knowing they were going to get their noses rubbed in it. So her evolution was a bit shocking, really. And with the hire of Mike Fleming, the prototype "I've been told" guy in the trade world, combined with a much harder time cloaking her "sources," Deadline Hollywood has become a trade replacement with some snarky headlines.

The Wrap, on the other hand, wanted to be Variety from the start. It hired from the ranks of former Variety employees and put the former Variety publisher on its board. It acquired Variety's closely-held Academy list from the disgruntled. While the idea of "citizen bloggers" has almost completely failed - as it has as a major traffic driver at The Huffington Post - The Wrap has embraced the role of being a catch-all for trade news, particularly as led by Josef Adalian, who has become one of the television industry's top go-to reads virtually overnight after exiting Variety and landing at The Wrap. He is ubiquitous, which is exactly what one has to be online, if you want to be read as content and not attitude.

The curiosity of all of this is - and I was actually considering this as an issue to write on last week - is that, when all is said and done, does being a new trade, with less overhead and less upside for revenue, seem like a very exciting ambition?

As in the film business, everyone in entertainment media is trying to figure out the landscape. indieWIRE has continued to expand beyond indie, clearly aware that they cannot make enough money on indie alone to keep the now-deep-pocketed doors open. That takes us back to last week's story about VOD and indieWIRE's owner, Ted Leonsis... who is there to leverage the journalism business into something else. What happens if that experiment of making the connection turns out not to work?

There is still no evidence that a content model with the kind of overhead being expended at VC-backed The Wrap or the wacky-rich-guy-backed Deadline Hollywood can carry its weight. There is a reason why HuffPo is now touting soft-core porn and getting its strongest numbers in those sections.

I have conflicted with the trades since I first started working as a journalist. My intro to Hollywood journalism was at ShoWest, where I was treated kindly by The Hollywood Reporter's Bob Dowling... which eventually led to a rather direct confrontation, private in the days before the web, about what the purpose of the trades was. He was not shy about making it clear that "investigative journalism" was not their role. To me, all journalism is an investigation.

But sure... if you know what you are and you aren't trying to pass yourself off as something else, I don't have a problem with you. That is why, when Anita Busch went after George Christy, I defended Christy. He was part of an old, venerated, corrupt system... but it was a real "shockedshocked" moment. After decades of the paper embracing and promoting the role Christy played, how was it fair to bring him down for doing the same old same old? Anita wanted to make THR a "real" journalist enterprise, but that was always counter to the role of a trade paper.

The only reason anyone pays much attention to Variety, critically, is not because Todd is the greatest critic in the world... but because studios, steeped in The Past, have continued to allow Variety to act as though they have a unique position in the industry and to review first. That has drawn much of the traffic they have had. And Variety - and Todd McCarthy - have held onto that long antiquated idea of how to handle review embargoes closely to their hearts. It has been their lifeblood, however absurd on its face, as "the trades" have been published on the newswires and as consumer content on the search engines for years.

So how, having fired McCarthy, slashing the number of reviews in the paper and online, and going all-freelance with reviews, how could any studio continue to allow Variety to own a space that it does not earn and for which it now shows clear contempt?

In other words... it's over.

Variety will not go out of business. But it will be a brand, eventually sold off, still trying to figure out how to balance print and online in a way that gives the title any distinction at all in the marketplace. Same with The Hollywood Reporter. As such, the title may someday disappear completely. We'll see.

A very smart man once suggested that I hire a trade reporter for MCN. A couple of years later, even though a fan of pre-sale Finke, when I brought up the idea again, he thought I was crazy. No. Bad idea. Do you really want to be the new version of a dying business? My answer, after some thought, was "no." But the urge to build towards something that has already been identified as successful... a classic style... can be intense.

What is our role? What should we aspire to? it's hard to know. But the notion of pushing towards the established power... time to let that go. In our arrogance, we all like to believe that given the opportunity, we could see more clearly, be more aggressive, solve what others have failed to solve. But as we dig our tunnels out of our creative POW camps, seeking the clear, clean sky and freedom, and we find ourselves running into the tunnels of those we sought to emulate, it is a scary thing. How will we find a way out?

The discussion and ambition will continue. But for now, long live Variety, Variety is dead.

Posted by dpoland at March 8, 2010 02:04 PM

Comments

Posted by: palmtree at March 8, 2010 03:44 PM

Posted by: movielocke at March 8, 2010 05:11 PM

Posted by: David Poland at March 8, 2010 05:56 PM

Posted by: Don Murphy at March 8, 2010 08:10 PM

Posted by: David Poland at March 8, 2010 08:14 PM

Posted by: Don Murphy at March 8, 2010 10:32 PM

Posted by: Edward Havens at March 9, 2010 09:46 AM

Posted by: christian at March 9, 2010 10:47 AM

Posted by: jeffmcm at March 9, 2010 11:56 AM

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