An empirical investigation of the Paramount antitrust case
2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 42; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00036840701604404
ISSN1466-4283
Autores Tópico(s)Auction Theory and Applications
ResumoAbstract Production patterns in the US movie industry changed drastically between 1940 and 1960. During these decades, a major event took place: the Paramount antitrust case was resolved by the US Supreme Court in 1948. As a result, the five largest studios (MGM, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers and RKO) were forced to vertically disintegrate and separate production and distribution from exhibition. The Supreme Court also banned these and three other studios (Columbia, Universal and United Artists) from using block booking as contractual practice. In this article, I examine how this antitrust ruling affected the movie industry. Acknowledgements I am grateful for comments received from Andy Hanssen, Torsten Schmidt, Chris Snyder, Nancy Qian, seminar participants at UCSC and the 2006 IIOC conference in Boston, and an anonymous referee. Nhan and Victoria Nguyen helped with the data collection. The usual disclaimer applies. Notes 1This article also contributes to the movie economics literature. Examples are work by De Vany (Citation2004), Chisholm (Citation1993) or Smith and Smith (Citation1986). 2I obtained most of the information on the proceedings of the case from Hollywood Renegades website (http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/1film_antitrust.htm) and others (e.g. http://www.homevideo.net/FIRM/antitrst.htm). 3The Big Eight studios were Fox, MGM, Warner, RKO, Paramount, Columbia, Universal and United Artists. 4Surprisingly the studios never brought up the development of television as part of their concerns. This is so mainly because the studios did not foresee television to become such an important threat as it later became. 5Theatre pooling was the case where two competing theatre chains combined for their mutual advantage. 6The studio owned four of the nine operating stations in the country and had introduced television stations in Chicago and Los Angeles. 7The Catalog provides online information on every feature-length film produced in America or financed by American production companies from 1893 to 1970. The information included in the data set includes details on cast, crew, plot summaries, subjects, genres and historical notes for each film. 8Most of these were documentaries and news reports about World War II and the Korea War. 9I define co-production as a movie produced by more than one studio. 10These data come from the 2001-2002 Encyclopedia of Exhibition from the National Association of Theater Owners.
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