Comment by johanvts
For movies in particular the tail is very thin. Only very few 50 year old movies are ever watched. Was any commercial movie ever financed without a view to making a profit in the box office/initial release?
For movies in particular the tail is very thin. Only very few 50 year old movies are ever watched. Was any commercial movie ever financed without a view to making a profit in the box office/initial release?
With books it's even worse. Movies might get a trickle of revenue from TV licensing but once a book is out of print (which usually happens very quickly, and most never go into print again), that's it. No more revenue from that book, it continues to circulate in libraries and used bookstores but the author and publisher gets nothing from that.
According to Matt Damon (in one of many interviews) a lot of movies were produced with the second revenue stream (vhs/dvd) being part of the calculations, that is why we now get a lot less variety and alternative movies made, that second revenue stream doesn’t exist any more (I assume streaming pays very little in comparison).