Movie madness: Why Chinese cinemas are empty but full
bbc.com
bbc.com
The music sales metric vendor called Soundscan would pick up these sales numbers and deliver them overnight to the labels.
On Wednesday the labels' marketing teams would take a look at the numbers and interpret them as widespread interest. So they would back the CD with marketing programs, giving the CD a better chance to find an audience.
Similar things happen with book sales.
But, the point here is to find an audience, not to manipulate the stock market.
https://deadspin.com/5982547/raiders-will-reduce-seating-cap...
You’re missing a key part of this. It’s only “blacked out” in the local market of the home team.
If the Cowboys are playing in Jacksonville, you better believe that game is going to be on TV in Dallas (and possibly most of the rest of the country) no matter how many tickets get sold in Jacksonville.
That said, blackouts are very rare and AFAIK no game has been blacked out in about 5 years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_tel...
Sounds like you'd have to investigate very thoroughly to know this? You'd have to have the numbered layout of every cinema, along with the ticket sales data. I mean it's not like you couldn't do it, but if you had a data scientist is that what you'd make him work on?
http://www.chinanews.com/m/yl/2016/08-29/7987022.shtml
This article has a summary of timeline (as an image in Chinese), notice the last update was around Apr 2018, which is the latest news that I could find related to phantom bookings:
https://m.huxiu.com/article/242292.html
Nevertheless, it is also true that the problem hasn't been solved as of Apr 2018.
Why? There is a national pride in irrational stock market bubbles?
Anyway, Chinese government banned some large stock holder to sell their stock in previous nearly happened financial crisis. It's a terrorism against Chinese government if you do that.
Maybe this kind of chicanery has something to do with it?
Are fake ticket sales at empty cinemas just the tip of the iceberg?
[a] https://money.cnn.com/investing/china-stock-market-meltdown/
In Tim Oreilly's book 'WTF? What's the future and why it's up to us' (1), he talks quite a bit about the emergence of the idea of corporations focussing on maximizing shareholder value over actually productivity (true societal/economic value).
It's the same philosophy that drives the standard massively inflated corporate 'leader' comoensation packages - even when some leaders are severely incompetant. This Wash. Post article describes it a bit (2), but Tim pinpoints the origin to a specific conference talk (can't remember who/when exactly, but the shift occured sometime in early 80's). It's why founders/early invvestors can achieve massive payouts by selling a company even when they've never achieved a profit and ultimately fail - because they're paid in 'smart money' vice cash from profits ('dumb money' - how the worker bee's are paid). It's why companies will continue to opt for short-term gains by displacing workforce with automation versus investing in the long term health of a comoany by training their workforce to be more efficient working in conjunction with automation.
Trust me, I believe in large compensation/payouts for talent, but I think that the talent should be measured in true contribution to the health of the economy - which is distinct from the percieved value of a share.
HN: Can we please start focussing on building truely productive companies again?
1. https://www.oreilly.com/tim/wtf-book.html 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/businesses-f...
Most measures of economic health focus on total production. If two societies go head to head, long-run total production will predict both military success and the rate of technological advancement.
Smart Money = compensation via shares. It's "smart" because it generally grows quickly in value based on the companies pefformance, versus the dollar which only grows in value when the overall economy (standard of living) improves.
Dumb Money = compensation in cash.
Executive/early investor compensation via smart money really only became the norm when the government started to crack down on massive corporate salaries (1). i.e. massive "dumb money" payouts.
> Employees have options for liquidating there shares as well in the secondary markets.
Not all companies pay employees (especially those in lower tier roles/hired after a companies founding) in smart money. For instance, my company currently only pays in dumb money (no stock) below the VP level. About 7 years ago, we used to be employee owned, and we recieved/could purchase shares (technically smart money). They matched our 401K's with these shares. However, these shares were VERY different from the shares issued to corporate leadership. We were not allowed to liquidate until 5 years after leaving the company. When the company started to tank, the share dropped from $20 to virtually zero and corporate officers liquidated their shares quickly. Ultimately, the employee stock was dissolved completely when the company was sold. I personally lost $100K. The ex-CEO committed suicide this year - I'm assuming from guilt.
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2017/11...
Afterwards tax payers can pickup the bill.
I gues the movie executives can pick some tax payer paid bonuses like American bankers in 2008.
And it's not really 'tax payers' that pay the bill here, it's 'stock owners'. There's no reason to bail out a movie company.
One probably shouldn't be 'making movies' if fake sales are necessary because nobody wants to watch.
> And it's not really 'tax payers' that pay the bill here, it's 'stock owners'. There's no reason to bail out a movie company.
I don't know how it works in China, but often in the U.S., when people put their life savings into junk bonds (or an overly risky house mortgage) that inevitably go bust, they declare banckruptcy and ultimately tax debt is forgiven or severely cut, or tex revenues are funneled to them in the form of wellfare to help them stay afloat. So, yes, when a commercial entity fails for whatever reason (even criminally bad decisions), the tax payers are the ones left paying for the social safety net to keep the afloat.
Tldr: it's fine and there are people.
These buildings are aginging rapidly while mostly unoccupied, which is a huge waste of resources.
Quality is also abysmal to start with. Looking at some buildings in decay they seem like movie/theme park sets.