Jessica Hagy

Is the Entertainment Industry Recession-Proof?

Thank you Julia for another post that offers a business insight into the media and entertainment world. I always love reading your posts and this entry proves no exception. I thought it was especially interesting how you mentioned that "staycations" are adding to the Entertainment Industry's resilience to recession. Though many people across the blogosphere have hypothesized that just as it was in the Great Depression, (frightening, that our current economy is being linked at all to the Great Depression) the escapism of entertainment will maintain its resistance to a poor economy. You mentioned that you believed television and video games would benefit directly from the consumerism of "staycations" but I have to wonder if television is really that strong right now, especially after generally less-than-impressive season network debuts. Though, as you mentioned, video game sales continue to benefit from the "staycation" cutbacks, I think entertainment will really benefit across the board.

As News Corps' CEO Rupert Murdoch recently said, "We are no longer dependent on the strength of one market or medium." Hopefully, the recession resistance will extend to all entertainment mediums and effectively keep at least one industry "safe" in the current economy.

I also thought it was interesting that you specifically noted the fact that "the number of TVs shipped to retailers in the U.S. and Canada grew 26 percent to 9.3 million units in the second quarter." With the strength of TV sales and the presumed success of TV and video games, I presume that the film industry must be taking a larger economic hit than TV and video games. Obviously films depend on much larger budgets and expensive advertising; have you noticed a large descrepancy between the recession immunity of the TV industry and the film industry?