Introduction

As the conglomeration of the film industry was in full swing in the late 1970s, the development of new technologies such as cable and pay-cable television, home video and (during the 1980s) satellite television created new lucrative markets for the exploitation of the feature film. Gradually, the theatrical run became only one – though still extremely important – avenue for the commercial exploitation of a film, before it found its way to the ancillary markets. With the commodity already produced, the only expenses involved included new marketing campaigns tailor-made for the particular demographics the new exhibition technologies served, and the cost of the transfer to the new format (such as the production of video cassettes). Realising that the ancillary markets could exponentially increase the profits from film production, the conglomerate owners of the majors moved to control all those markets.

This move became particularly evident in the early and mid-1980s, when the conglomerates started downsizing their interests in other areas, concentrating instead on expanding their holdings in the entertainment and leisure fields. The result of this process was that the conglomerates evolved gradually into fully diversified entertainment corporations. This evolution was characterised by a wave of mergers and takeovers in which the parent companies of the former studios acquired or established a large number of entertainment-related divisions to accompany their film-producing and film-distributing subsidiaries. The main consequence of this development was the creation of a horizontal industrial structure whereby all the divisions of the conglomerate were in the business of distributing and promoting different formats and versions of the same product, a feature film that was originally financed and distributed by the majors. This ‘interdependency of cultural production and distribution’, which is often referred to as ‘synergy’, influenced immensely the trajectory of mainstream American cinema, as these companies increasingly privileged the production of properties that could be easily exploited in ancillary markets. In other words, they privileged the production of films that could attract repeat viewings (because of the stars they featured, the special effects they contained, the music that accompanied them and so on).