The first step in effecting a solution is recognizing the agenda-driven, narrowly defined interest group that has been squeezing the life out of the entertainment industry since Operation Paperclip and removing their power.

That power is market and production control.

It's no secret that in times of war, economic collapse, and recession, the entertainment industry makes money.  Even in the Great Depression, The Entertainment Industry lost less than 40% of its value, while the stock market lost over 80%, and more than 7,000 banks folded... leaving depositors holding the bag for a $1,300,000,000.00.

(That's equivalent to over $30 Billion in 2024, adjusting for inflation)

And get this! The greatest achievements in innovation and technology that have driven us into the future of entertainment have been made during recession, depression, and WAR.

Here are just a few examples:

1887- America enters the war in Hawaii (Hawaiian Rebellions)

1888- The first Silent Movie is made

1900-1909- Britain was involved in too many wars to count

1908- Britain creates the first color movie

1918- WWI ended

1919- less than 6 months later Phonofilm (film with sound) was patented

1927- The first musical, "The Jazz Man" was made. It set the industry for a strong stand for the crash in 1929.

In the 10 long years it took America to recover, the entire industry, from radio to film had evolved into a powerhouse for the US economy. And unfortunately, in Germany, it had given birth to the beast we fight today... propaganda.

When the war ended, elites tied to the same interest groups this project seeks to unseat, arranged deals for Nazi scientists and tech creators to escape prosecution and come to America.

They called it Operation Paperclip. 

Rightly fearing what the industry could do as a propaganda arm, the US Trade Commission finally started looking into the Sherman Antitrust Act and efforts to thwart the total monopolization of an already heavily corrupt scene, with the US vs paramount in 1948.

This all but decimated the entirety of the industry. They did what no one had been able to do since 1921... break up the power of the big 5... Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures, and Columbia Pictures.

The studios owned the cinemas. They controlled content, what was made… when… everything.

Everything!

Even the Actors weren’t free agents. They were owned by the studios and told which and how many films they’d make each year… they earned a salary.

After all the propaganda films cranked out by the Axis of Evil in WW2, the American govt saw the power of motion pictures and got really scared.  So frightened in fact, that they told the studios,

“Look, you gotta give up something. The monopoly you guys got going on is just too damn big.”.

"In the end, the Court ruled in United States v. Paramount on May 4, 1948, finding that the studios had violated anti-trust laws, in a devastating blow to five major studios and three smaller ones. The case had roots dating back to 1921 when concerns first arose about the studios and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act."

Studios knew the FTC was right but didn’t want to give up the content…

So, they gave up the theater chains.

Stay with me here... because this is where WE come in...

Universal was literally about to go out of business. Their lots were empty and so were their coffers. UNIVERSAL! How scary is that? That’s when a group of entrepreneurs stepped in.

Who do you think they were?

Radio stations.

Where was their cash flow from??

Serials.

They said, "This change isn’t deadly. It’s an opportunity!!". They bought Uni' for like 10 cents on the dollar and started implementing change.

What do you think the first thing they did was?

They embraced what was killing them.

They immediately became the premiere TV producer for Hollywood. They utilized their lots to make things the market was into at the time… like Westerns. You know, like Bonanza... and all those shutdown sound stages that weren’t being used to make films… they used those to make sitcoms.

All of a sudden, they became a powerhouse in the industry.

The others followed suit.

They defeated the monster by using it as a tool.

Let me show you what I mean:

In 1946, only 7,000 sets were sold nationwide. In 1950, there were approximately 6 million television sets in the United States. By the end of the 1950s, more than 50 million televisions were in use. 

 "By 1955, half of all U.S. homes had a television, and by 1960, 90% of households had one." 

Change is hard. It comes with difficult decisions. But the decision to embrace change and use it in your favor is NEVER… absolutely NEVER the wrong decision.

Big changes came again around 2008, when the economy did that thing… you know what I’m talking about… and at the same time we were on the peak of internal changes in the motion picture industry that had started in the 80’s with Beta, VHS, and cable. Home video started booming in 90s… then DVD’s came along. Cable was silently plodding along under the radar, sucking up a larger and larger share of revenues… then BAM! Digital!!

Inevitable CHANGE… or as I like to call it, “Opportunity”.

See, back then, studios were doing 25 to 26 films a year, box office revenue was increasing and everybody was happy. But when the 2008 "economic downturn" happened, and the home entertainment thing started to blow up, box office revenues started going down and studios freaked out! They cut back to only doing like 8 or 10 at films a year.

Instead of producers bringing shows to studios to buy, producers had to go to studios and ask “Do you have anything we can do?”. No one was looking at things from the right perspective.

They weren’t looking at the opportunity that was staring them in the face.

But Netflix was.

They were ready.

They went digital and started doing Original content.

It was like going from renting a home to not just buying one, but investing in real estate!

Shortly after that huge hit to studios, TV was born. It was a HUGE change.

TV changed everything.

As we moved into the 50’s and 60’s, it became commercially available on a mass level because it became more affordable. That’s when people started to realize they could sit in the comfort of their homes and watch their favorite characters.

Big shock...Hollywood HATED TV! It was a disruptor before people even knew what disrupting was!

But radio shows... They were on top of it!

They saw the change, seized the opportunity, and implemented a plan that changed entertainment forever!

They started putting their serial stories on TV.

At that point, TV became a viable competitor for theaters and studios. And like we talked about with Ghostbusters, studios thought it was gonna kill ‘em. Executives who were unwilling to see the change as an opportunity, truly believed it was gonna put them out of business! They just weren’t prepared.

They didn’t know what future-proofing was!

All they could do was look at the numbers and hear that scary sucking sound as people watched more TV and came out less and less for the theater. Sound familiar??

TV was the cinema's OTT...

You don’t have to be a visionary. You just have to have your eyes open so you can recognize it.

As entrepreneurs, you have to Identify, plan, and have the guts to implement. Now, we’re faced with inevitable change again, a decade later, as OTT begins to disrupt the industry like TV… like Home video… like Cable… Like Digital. We all see it. I have a plan for it.

I’m coming to you… to partner… to implement, so we can take advantage of this inevitable change and USE IT as an opportunity. We can take advantage of it and pioneer it. We can ride the wave instead of being drown by it or surviving it, only to tread water until the sharks come.

From cave paintings to the internet, cinema to youtube, access has never been greater, and one thing never changes… change. What can we do? Future proof… here’s how.

People are changeable. We need a malleable product that can change and grow with them… one that can ride the wave and weather the changing tides of a fickle industry that wants, no… demands, what it wants when it wants it, like Veruca Salt in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.