Sunday, November 22, 2009

New Moon--Third Biggest Opening Weekend of All Time

Scott Mendelson, "Weekend Box Office Review" November 22, 2009

The Twilight Series obsession has hit and hit hard, with the movie of the second book in the series, New Moon, coming out this past weekend. Some people thought there was an obsession with the Harry Potter series, but it is nothing compared to Twilight. The teen girl/vampire/ware wolf story has captured the attention of millions of readers. New Moon's release has shown this obsession. Raking in an all time high of $72.7 million dollars in the first 24 hours. This was the most money made on a Friday movie on any single movie. Over the weekend it made a total of $140.7 million which puts it in third place behind Batman Dark Knight $158 million and Spiderman 3 $151 million. This movie's audience was was 80% female and only 20% male. If you need the movie to do exceptionally well you need it to appeal more so to both sexes. Although without the male audience it still would have come in 8th place of all time gross money made over the weekend.

This is very impressive. Although I have yet to see New Moon I plan on it tomorrow, or this weekend. It is very impressive that it made the all time most money for movies on the first night, and third most for a weekend. The movies appeals mostly to females, which is okay because the book does as well. The movie would definitely rake in more money if it did appeal to a more male audience, as well as female. Although I still will probably see it, if they made the next movie appealing to a more equal audience than it should make more money than even this. Then again it might not for many reasons like if the book isn't as good, and if the movie just doesn't go over as well as this one. The outlook for the Twilight Series is very good in the future, but only time will tell how it turns out. For now we have New Moon and Twilight and they are both fantastic (even though Jacob is portrayed as a sex symbol. it works for the female audience).

Monday, November 16, 2009

Newspapers Aren't Dying Off--They are Surviving

Daniel Gross, "Newspapers aren't doing as badly as you think."

In the past year there have been many people who are very skeptical of the future of the newspaper industry. There has been widespread discussion on whether it will totally disappear in a few years because the web out does the news paper, and fewer people are buying newspapers, and no one wants to pay for a paper anymore, but this is not true. News papers are simply a part of the economic downturn that our nation has experienced and been experiencing. Yes they have lost consumer numbers, but this has set them into survival mode. The newspapers have raised the cost to get a paper, or have a paper delivered to your house. It is true that raising prices will cause you to lose some of your consumers, but if you lose 10% of consumers by increasing the price by 11% you will be okay. Newspapers now have to print fewer copies and pay less for this printing and sell more at higher prices. They have found out a way to survive the economic downturn, and they are not dissipating forever.

This was an interesting article because beforehand I was one of those people who was a bit skeptical about newspapers future. It seemed that there was no reason for us to have newspapers if we could get all of our news from offline, but I was wrong. Newspapers are smarter than I thought. These newspaper companies have figured out a way to continue selling their product and maybe, after the economic recession, earn more money in doing so. Newspapers are a vital part of our society, It is a very basic way in which we get the news of the days and weeks before. Newspapers, for this reason, will always be around and will always survive, no matter the economic conditions. The increase in price is genius, at least for the 10% loss and 11% increase that is. Newspapers have discovered a solution to surviving when everyone thought they would be destroyed, and now that they have made it this far they will be able to survive anything. Newspapers are stronger than ever, and they will never simply die off they will survive.