Sunday, February 3, 2013

Giving the celebs a break...

Why bloopers count even in the world of media & entertainment

Usually, it’s the celebs who walk aaway with honours when it comes to goof-ups and slip-ups in the world of media and entertainment; but once in a blue-moon, the blue-eyed boys do steal the show with billion-dollar bloopers! A few such rare moments follow...

Virgin Records, a British record label founded in 1972, was sold by Branson to Thorn EMI in June 1992 for a reported $1 billion, with a special non-competition clause that prevented Branson from founding another recording company over the following five years post-deal. Branson had a choice: to either sell-off his airline baby, Virgin Atlantic or his records business. In the process, he sold-off a profitable business (Virgin Records), to save a business which was in trouble, and was incurring losses. Even Time magazine documents that the sale of Virgin Records to Thorn EMI was the biggest mistake that Branson ever made. Today, Virgin Records is part of EMI, and is the 3rd largest music company in the world, and Virgin Atlantic is reportedly making losses.

Then there is the media mughol Rupert Murdoch, who bought the baseball franchise Dodgers from the O’Malley family in 1997, for a whopping $311 million – a high price at that time. Murdoch bought Dodgers hoping that it would complement FOX Sports’ content. But post-deal, Murdoch renewed the contracts of all the players, because of which, their remunerations shot-up by as high as 50%! However, the revenue prospects worsened... Finally Murdoch sold Dodgers for $439 million in 2004, incurring losses amounting to millions of dollars in the process... Another blunder was made by NBC, when it cancelled the Baywatch TV show after just one season (in 1989) for lack of viewership and high costs. Then, David Hasselhoff invested his own money in it and relaunched it in 1991. The show became the most-watched TV show of all times, with 1.1 billion viewers! To sign off, here’s another one from Decca Records when it rejected an unrecognised music band in 1962, stating: “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out...” The band was later signed-up by EMI and became an instant hit. You know it as ‘The Beatles’ today! Similarly, Universal Studios approached Mars to use M&M’s in their new film to be directed by Steven Speilberg.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,