Block Booking Migrates to Television

Abstract

This article examines the recent Hollywood studio practice of distributing international television programming via a bundling strategy, labeled an output deal, and situates the practice as a further iteration of the early Hollywood system of “block booking” feature films. Using Germany as a case study, the authors looks at how Hollywood compelled German distributors and broadcasters to take on large packages of television programming that combined highly desirable blockbuster motion pictures with far less valuable television series. Just as the original practice of block booking exerted financial pressure on theater owners, the burdensome practice of television programming output deals led to a major upheaval in Germany’s entertainment industry, driving the second largest German media company into bankruptcy. The international television output deal persists, however, because transnational media regulations cannot hope to marshal the enforcement powers of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Supreme Court. Market forces within the global entertainment industry have done little to curtail the expansion of global media conglomerates. And yet, even as global power dynamics remain essentially the same, with Hollywood retaining its primary position, this case study points to rising instabilities that threaten an American-dominated international media economy.