A dry but deeply researched, clearly delineated primer on how the film and TV industry dug itself into a financial hole.
It’s the pictures that got small.
Most consumers and industry insiders would agree that the film and TV industry is in a severe economic slump. To explain how it got there, academic media experts Banks and Fortmueller go back to 2013, when streaming services began producing their own programming. Before then, Hollywood was a monolithic industry, able to attract cash-rich investors with the promise of a share of the gross profits and proximity to the glamorous world of show business while restricting access to creative control. But when streaming services morphed into studios, the financial model changed. Suddenly Wall Street bankers and private equity firms became involved. They demanded higher profit margins and started leveraging intellectual property, licensing deals, and additional revenue streams. Tech companies from Silicon Valley joined in, bringing with them sophisticated data-driven methodologies for monitoring and measuring success, which was used to shape the creative process. “Amazon, Apple, and Netflix are all tech companies at their core, but they also adopt the logic of consulting firms and use data to optimize their business practices, create efficiencies, and reimagine workflows that privilege their models of innovation and cost saving,” the authors write. One example they cite is the algorithm used in the Netflix Recommendation System, which makes content suggestions to viewers “within a narrow range of choices and often obscure the range of available options, thus eliminating viewer agency.” But that’s just the first of many woes inflicted on the industry in the past 12 years. Banks and Fortmueller detail a series of events that occurred between then and now that created a perfect storm for destabilizing the industry, including the unsustainable rise of Peak TV, the Covid-19 pandemic, the #MeToo movement, and the 2023 back-to-back labor strikes by Hollywood writers and actors.
A dry but deeply researched, clearly delineated primer on how the film and TV industry dug itself into a financial hole.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9780520412880
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Univ. of California
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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