Hollywood Scoreboard

It's the summer and my wife is celebrating the fact that our family TV isn't always on a sporting event (to be fair, I am usually watching baseball on my iPod or computer). Since the end of the NBA finals and the Stanley Cup Finals I have been catching up on movies and television shows that I neglected during the fall, winter and spring. One of the things I miss about the lack of sports is all the analysis. Pre-game, post-game, in-game, I love the way sports allows us to argue about who is the best player and what's the greatest season. Growing up, my family loved to have sports debates at every family gathering. When we had exhausted that topic we moved on to film and television. The shouting over entertainment was always louder than shouting over sports because there is no way to prove you are right.

The problem with debating entertainment is that there are few accepted evaluative criteria. As Bill Simmons writes in his column we rely on box office and Rotten Tomato rankings to determine who is "winning" in Hollywood. Entertainment shows seem more obsessed with gossip then they are with evaluating careers and films. I suppose this makes sense with their business model, gossip sells better than entertainment business analysis, but I have always felt there should be a Hollywood Sportscenter or Hollywood Scoreboard which analyzes Hollywood from a business and cultural standpoint.

My interest in this kind of analysis is reflected in my profession, I analyze the business and culture of the industry for a living, but in academia the areas of inquiry are much more lofty than they would be on a Hollywood Scoreboard. I examine how entertainment business and digital technologies change the way we understand our daily lives. Hollywood Scoreboard would keep track of who is winning the game of entertainment. It would treat each year as a season and rank entertainers by their yearly performance. Admittedly there are a lot of problems with quantifying art but I believe there are some stats that would provide guidelines for robust debate.

Unlike Simmons, I would consider actresses to be "movie stars" (Jolie, Bullock, Roberts, Witherspoon, Fey) and I would include famous writers, producers and directors (Spielberg, Lucas, Abrams, Whedon, Nolan). Hollywood Scoreboard would report and debate contracts, opening weekends, press appearances, home entertainment deals, and general buzz, it could even breakdown scenes like analysts breakdown game film (When you look at a Hugh Jackman you are looking at a guy who is a triple threat. See how he enters this scene here, FREEZE IT, pops his claws and slices the guy in half. Now that is acting - Jon Gruden of Hollywood Scoreboard). All of this work would be done to determine a stars cultural relevance and the success he/she is having navigating their career.

Here are a few of the evaluative criteria my wife and I came up with this morning over breakfast. Admittedly, our criteria is a little too obsessed with the profit statistics. There is much more to a movie star's status than money and we would love to hear suggestions for ways to account for these intangibles.

Hollywood Scoreboard Stats:

Box Office (with special attention to opening weekend and foreign gross)

Home Entertainment Revenue

• We are talking DVD, Digital Download and Syndication
• Stars get a percentage of these profits based on the contracts they negotiate
• Some stars did not hit it big until their DVDs went wild (Mike Myers = Austin Powers)

Awards

Magazine Covers

• The value of a magazine cover would be determined by how many editions were sold, adjusted for stories in the magazine and the popularity of the magazine overall.
• Basically we want to know if the sheer presence of a star on a magazine helps sales.

Press Appearances

• Subject to the same adjusted numbers as magazine covers

Reviews

• Rotten Tomato ratings including Top Critics and General Audience

Digital Presence

• Top Tweets
• Twitter Followers
• Facebook Friends
  

I would love to hear more suggestions.