So, How Long WIll It Take For Hollywood's Legacy Leaders To Fail?

I've been having an e-mail debate with a friend of mine over the last couple of days over the eventual transformation of the video content business.  He thinks that the transition will take a long time and the result will a complex mesh of existing a new players.

I am not so sure.  It's true, I do want to see the new players triumph (I've got a vested interest), but judging by other examples in industrial history, it seems like incumbents generally do not survive technological transitions.  The changing nature of the S&P 500 is itself a testament to the speed with which companies can turn over.

In the moment, it can seem like big companies can last forever.  But they can disappear in a flash - much faster than most people imagine is possible.  And people forget the losers very quickly.  Ask a person in New York for directions for the Pan Am tower and you'll see just how quickly memories fade.

I think a typical pattern of industry transformation looks like this:

1. New companies enter market with new technology, lots of hype, and low revenues
2. Hype dissipates and incumbents make half-hearted efforts to ape new technology
3. Industry "experts" announce existing technology will dominante for a long time, think incumbents can dominate both new and old technologies
4. New entrants reach critical mass, start rapid market share transition
5. Incumbents see their "new" products are too weak to compete, plunge suddenly to irrelevance

(I loved this book on failure)

Stages 1-3 can last for decades, but once stage 4 arrives, companies that have survived for decades can disappear in a year or two.

This pattern keeps getting repeated in industries that are subjected to intense technological change.  The New Yorker has an excellent recent article on the failure of Blockbuster and, more generally, the failure of traditional "Category Killers" to make the transition online despite analyst expectations that they would do so.  (Link)

One reason, I think, that whole industries that seem so strong can collapse nearly overnight is the typical structure of US companies.  Shareholder-capitalism demands that companies return cash and profits to investors and use debt as a tax-efficient financing tool  While individually controlled companies like Apple or Microsoft can amass billions in cash, shareholder-driven companies like IBM tend to disperse it quickly and keep little on hand.

This works great as long as "conventional wisdom" supports the continued viability of the industry, credit and capital continue to be available even if key players have significant weaknesses.  Once investor and creditor sentiment turns, however, the slightest weakness can be fatal.  Covenants in loans mean they can be called in quickly and fickle markets and suddenly deny credit to troubled companies.  One day you can roll over your loans, a week later, you can't.

There are lots of industries that have suddenly failed or been rapidly and radically transformed in bouts of intense creative destruction.  You could write a whole PhD in economics on the decline of industries (which I might enjoy if I had the time)  Here is my take on a few:

1. US Electronics Companies

Throughout the 1970s, companies from Japan like Sony gained share at the expense of traditional US electronics companies.  Japan's electronics companies were better at manufacturing and miniaturization than their US counterparts, not to mention quality.  Despite numerous efforts to "fix" the industry, it largely folded in the 1980s.

Critics recognized the troubles of the US electronics companies in the early 1980s and in less than a decade, most of the were gone.

Time from global leadership to irrelevance: 1950-1985: 35 years.

Before the Fall & Lucky To Survive.  Time Magazine (also lucky to survive)

2. US Automotive Industry

Critics of the US automotive industry were already taking on the industry in the early 1970s, but it wasn't until 2009 that the industry folded.  The enormous barriers to entry and special government favors for the US auto makers kept them in business for 40 years after they lost their competitive edge.

Had you asked any smart industry analyst in 2005 if GM could be Bankrupt in 2009, they would laughed at you. (In researching this, I found to my amazement that while there was virtually no discussion of the risk of bankruptcy for GM in 2006, this was one call that S&P actually got right - they cut GM's credit rating to junk in May 2006)

Time from global leadership to irrelevance: 1950 to 2010: 60 years.

3. Japan's Electronics Industry

Japan's reign at the top of the global electronics has been short and bitter.  In the 1980s, Sony was the world's most desirable electronics brand.  The PlayStation 2, introduced in 2000, may be recognized as Sony's high water mark and final hit product.  The company has been in decline for more than a decade, along with the rest of Japan's electronics industry.

Thanks to unlimited loans from Japan's government, the Japanese industry will never go bankrupt in the spectacular fashion of the US automotive industry, but it has already faded from relevance in the global market.

Time from global leadership to failure: 1985 to 2005.  20 years.


So where is Hollywood in this equation?  The traditional players in Hollywood peaked in 1999.  Before the internet had made file sharing rampant, while people were still buying DVDs and VHS tapes of their favorite movies and renting them at Blockbuster and paying late fees.  Before you could subscribe to Netflix.

So where are we 10 years later: I think we're somewhere around stage 3 or 4 of the failure cycle.  Hype for online media has faded and many experts think it looks like traditional distributors are going to have a strong role in both online and traditional distribution.  Like Blockbuster, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too.

The Economist recently announced that old media firms are "firmly in control of internet video."  Perhaps there's no surer sign of impending transformation that authoritative pronunciations to the contrary.

Wishful Thinking.  

But the online component is taking off at an exceptional rate.  Netflix has achieved or is close to achieving critical mass along with Hulu and YouTube.  56 million Americans have ditched live TV, of which 22 million don't even bother with a DVR - they skip TV altogether or watch it purely online.

And the traditional TV networks, what are their real assets:

• Broadcast television stations
• Brands
• Program rights for current and past TV shows
• Cable television stations and brands
• Advertising relationships and sales forces

Every single one of those assets is far less valuable than many people believe today.  Take broadcast TV stations.  In a country where more than 80% of the population has cable TV, not necessarily an essential asset.  And the truth is that the networks themselves do not actually make most of their TV shows.  The production companies sell to the highest bidder.

And the network brands and advertising relationships?  They are utterly worthless.  What does NBC stand for?  When you think NBC do you think of a specific product? Of course not!  Their legacy as providers of lowest-common-denominator entertainment mean that high end product (30 Rock) is jammed together with low-end reality TV.  The brands do not stand for anything at all and the advertising relationships are equally worthless.  Google will do a better and cheaper job of selling your airtime and content in the very near future.

Some people think the implosion of the traditional video distribution industry can't  happen for two key reasons: that the cable companies threatened by the transformation control the IP pipe into the home and that the size of video content will send the cost of broadband soaring to unreasonable levels.

I think both scenarios are unlikely.  Take blocking the IP pipe into the home.  It's true today in the US that cable companies dominate the IP delivery pipe.  They dominate but they are not the sole provider.  And while they have great power, there are several checks on that power.  To start with, they are selling broadband as a service.  Enraging your customer base is not good for business.  (well, let's be honest, cable companies have been doing that for years anyway).  More importantly, cable companies are regulated monopolies subject to control by the FCC and municipal authorities that grant those monopolies.  They do not generally smile upon the strangulation of new industries.

The leaves a second option: surging broadband prices or costly bandwidth caps.  History also makes this seem unlikely.  Every few years people announce that the internet is about to break.  Amazingly, it's still working.  People used to think that streaming music was going to do the internet in.  Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of the Ethernet, forecast the internet would collapse in 1996.  Oops.  In fact, despite demand surging from email to web pages  with pictures to music and now, finally, video, the internet has not collapsed.  Broadband has never been cheaper.  Why would 20 years of technological progress stop now?

So, yes, I guess this is a long-winded way of saying I think the end is nigh.  You won't seem on the corner of Hollywood and Vine with my sign, but I will be watching with eager anticipation.  And that failure will be good for America.   Because the happy ending, at least in America, is that every wave of corporate destruction is followed by one of re-birth.  Even as GM dies, California is churning the first wave of new auto startups in decades.  And after the whole US electronics industry collapsed, Intel, Cisco, and Apple rose from the ashes.  Before Hollywood can have a happy ending, it needs a crisis.  Every good script writer knows that.