'End of Hollywood as we know it'

Marty Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, argues that piracy, digital technology and the expectation of consumers that Internet content is free makes this "not a happy time to be an entertainment industry executive." He blogs at the Jewish Journal:

If movies and TV want to avoid the epic collapse of music and print, they need to transform their business models as radically as digital technology has transformed the way that their customers interact with entertainment....

The suits just can’t imagine a world where executives, stars, directors and agents don’t make gazillion-dollar salaries, and where skyrocketing special effects budgets aren’t the only way to win audiences. Nor can they imagine that social media and smart phones are mortal threats to their power to monetize our attention.

Also in the Jewish Journal: After exploring Jewish traditions about sex (including that men are expected to satisfy their wives), Wendy Jaffe writes, "if sex is a central tenet of Jewish life, why isn’t that fact on the cover of the Judaism brochure?...Let’s face it; the no-cheeseburger rule doesn’t exactly have people knocking down our door."