Hollywood Faced With A Reality
By: Pam On: Jul/16/06 - 4 Comments
As the profits continue to plunge for the studios, the ‘major’ stars are forced to take paycuts!
Studios have taken note of the fact that only three of the 10 highest-grossing films last year – War of the Worlds, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Mr and Mrs Smith – were star-driven. The rest of the major hits – such as Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and The Chronicles of Narnia – had no stellar names, or fat salaries, to speak of.
July 16, 2006 - 08:54 AM on July 16th, 2006
Good. Maybe the ridiculous worship of Hollywood stars by the public is beginning to diminish.
Now the next thing that sorely needs to be addressed is the obscene pay and bennies for Corporate CEOs who come in, do nothing much more than lay off people (that are actually doing work), then get a big bonus as the company spirals into the toilet.
July 16, 2006 - 11:17 AM on July 16th, 2006
Amen to that Robert. I was the victim of one of those type situations. The company had been doing okay but the management had refused to listen to any of the store managers’ suggestions on how to direct the company to meet the needs of the changing market place. Instead of taking the profits the company had been making for the previous 70+ years and reinvesting in the company and updating stores, equipment and product lines to meet the changing market, they had taken the profits and used them to open chains of stores in other specialty markets. Those other chains were going up against such heavy hitters as Staples, and OfficeMax among others. As those chains consistently lost money, the management continued to dump the profits from the parent company into them while neglecting the parent company. Due to that neglect, the parent company eventually had a non-profitable year. Part of that neglect was the poor pay structure and bonus plans that had some managers working a full time job elsewhere and showing up at the stores only part time. It’s never beneficial to pay retail managers poorly. Good one’s are too hard to come by and it’s a long hour tiring thankless job. The board of directors went out and brought in a director of operations form outside of the industry and she was clueless as to how the company needed to progress and totally wrecked the place. They tried to have a small specialty craft store chain compete with the big box chains like Michael’s instead of expanding our product line and advertising in the niche that, at the time, we had virtually no competition in. Within 2 years, they had closed all of the retail outlets, trying to compete as a mail order only business. Within another 2 years, they had driven stock prices down so far (over $20 to under $3 / share) that their major competitor had come out of bankruptcy and bought them out. They are now expanding the chain once again. I have been approached on multiple occasions about going back to work for them.
Because of the board of directors’ and the new Director of Operations’ unwillingness to listen to the suggestions of the people who were actually face to face with the customers, hundreds of people lost their jobs and as an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Program) company, hundreds if not thousands lost their lifesavings and their retirements because of it.
July 16, 2006 - 03:58 PM on July 16th, 2006
I blame the Board of Directors first, FAO, since it is their job to look out for the interests of the shareholders (many of whom are also employees).
Too many stories just like the one you told. It seems like there is a CEO club, where they recruit these people from. You or I, despite having been in an industry for years, could never even get close. But they’ll hire someone who doesn’t have any real knowledge of the subject or business because they are a member of the club.
Two of the most high profile example of that was when Apple brought in sugar-water salesman John Sculley to be their CEO. Didn’t know jack about the technology but was a great salesman. That turned out to be a predicatble disaster. Then when the HP board brought in Carly Fiorina, who has a degree in Medieval History. Well she nearly took HP down to the dark ages, alright. Her big accomplishments were merging a crappy PC manufacturer with another crappy PC manufacturer, making one very large crappy PC manufacturer, plus laying off a lot of good people and nearly destroying the morale and culture of the company.
By the time they finally dumped her it was too late, she had given herself millions in bonuses, and no doubt had a very generous golden parachute deal anyway.
Where do we apply to get into the club? I would be happy to run companies into the ground for much less than what these Boards are currently paying, since that is what they seem to be looking for.
July 17, 2006 - 08:15 AM on July 17th, 2006
Looks like the leftists in hollywood are suddenly feeling the bite of a public that is tired of their parading and pandering i mean what cuased the cancelation of MARTIN SHEENS tv series THE WEST WING? they had better wake up and smell the coffee:roll: