U.S. entertainment: where are we and where might we go?

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By Bruce Ramer

A principal in the law firm of Gang, Tyre, Ramer & Brown, Ramer serves on the Center’s Board of Governors. Ramer is also a member of the USC Board of Trustees, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and others. 

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“Nobody knows anything.”

Nowhere is this aphorism more true than in the business for which it was invented, the entertainment business, where innovations in technology continue to create new platforms, with a ripple effect that leads to new forms of content and new consumer preferences and demands.

That process has only accelerated as the relevant technology changed from tubes and celluloid to chips and bits and from movie palaces and boxy TVs to cellphones and the Internet.

The best way to think about the future is to start with the past: to look back and see what has been developing, and try to discern trends that inform the direction of things to come — however, “history is not necessarily destiny.”

Most of the borders and boundaries that have existed over the recent history of the U.S. entertainment and media business have already begun to erode and will continue to drastically change or substantially disappear.

So we consider briefly the who, what, where, when, why and how of this shapeshifting business. (Read the full PDF of the article here)
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Bruce Ramer wrote this article for the inaugural issue of “USC Entertainment Law Spotlight,” published by the USC Gould School of Law.

 

 

 

February 16, 2018