Creative versus Corporate: a shift towards economic efficiency

            Roberts invokes these two identities during the key biases and gaps in the current body of research.  He distinguishes that in this clash it is really the executives that stifle the creative process of television and movies by keeping control over the production and distribution of these platforms.  It is not suprising to find out that there is a clash between the creative and commercial sides of the business.  This seems to be a trend in any sort of business that has a creative aspect to it.  Artists constantly claim to be stifled by commercial or business motives.  It is interesting, however, that Robert’s notes that creative writers go through the internal process of assessing whether something will be able to be a commercial success if it is picked up.  The internal dialogue of executives is much more business focused: “Can we sell it, is it marketable, is it even good.”  The question of is it even that good is basically a secondary question after executives figure out if they can even sell and market the movie.

            It seems through Robert’s research that the creative side is not as slighted as one might initially think.  Through his research there were opinions that were pulled showing that writters were actually shrude businessmen in their conduct over rights and royalties.  It is interesting to note that in today’s climate everyone understands the value of making a buck and therefore both creative and executives do what is nessecary to squeeze as much money out of a production as possible.  It seems that while there is a creative/commercial struggle that still drives some of Hollywood/broadcasting, the culture is very risk averse due to the large price tags of productions.  I think that now in this enormous industry that both creative and executives are adjusting their practices to be the most economically efficient, instead of argue of creative rights.  I think this is why some of the only artistically driven movies that become commercial have to have success at major film festivals before they are picked up by big studious, and that this is the reason for much of the blandness that surrounds the movie and television industry.