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January 19, 2005

If You Don't Like Suspense

If you prefer not to stay up past midnight on February 25 to hear the words, "And the winner is...", The Guardian (UK) has a formula for predicting who will take home the Oscars this year. Which leads me to wonder: will the movie industry soon be adopting a hit-prediction system as effective as the pop music software described elsewhere in the Guardian?

Among critics, the cliche is that the entertainment industry already works by tried-and-true formulas. And certainly this is what studios, networks, cable channels, and record companies would LIKE to do. What mega-corporation wants to go on investing millions of dollars in a product so unreliable it comes out different each time it is manufactured? But among the good people who actually make movies, TV shows, and records, the cliche is just the opposite: "Nobody knows anything."

What do AJ readers think of this apparent paradox?

Posted by at January 19, 2005 8:45 AM