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Sorry for taking so long to add my take on this, as I had to meet with editors, our box cover designers and shoot a scene today.
Between my business partner, Jim Powers and I, we produce well over 300 scenes a year, so we are pretty qualified to speak on this.
Production is down, way way down.
The only reason we shoot so much is we are lucky enough to distribute our content across numerous revenue streams.
Pure Play handles our physical media and US and Canadian broadcast, Plaid Bag Media, our foreign rights deals, Camz our live broadcasts, Dirty D of How I Got Rich our subscription based sites.
Most produces I know rely on one or two revenue streams.
They have been forced to resell their content to brokers that have whored it out on the net, As a result the value of their catlogue fell.
To make matters worse their revenue decreased, as a result of only having one of two possible ways to earn income.
Now you see producers desperate to make deals and work with program owners to give them "great deals" on exclusive content.
I have never had the luxury of being able to afford a production manager, multiple production assistants, lighting guys, expensive locations, fancy food on set etc...
I have always had to haggle on talent and negotiate in an effort to try and save as much capital as possible.
Now that times are tough you see other producers scrambling to adapt to what they feel are Spartan working conditions, or what I am used to.
The net result is a lot less people are being employed to produce content.
The ones who are lucky enough to get hired either work for less, or they don't work at all.
This is true of everyone involved in production from makeup artists, to talent, to production assistants.
It is not going to get any better until we stop supporting companies who steal our content and give it away for free.
I can't see how companies are able to turn a profit by paying the outrageous pre- paid spots the tube sites charge.
It is my hope, however naive it may be, that once the companies advertising on sites that give away content see that it does not make financial sense that this will force them out of business.
Unless this happens, we will see a continued downturn in production and our entire industry.
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