SOCIAL - PRO CHOICE and PRO LIFE

There is a section on "Abortion Divide" in the Abortion, Guns and Trump: A Church Group Tries to Navigate America’s Divisions 12/19/20 article in the Wall Street Journal. I don't know exactly what is the abortion law in this country. So this doodle may be already the law of the land. This doodle is a proposal that the US Congress pass a law that says pregnancy is a continuum, starting from a cell in one end and a baby at the other end. On the first portion of the continuum, abortion is legal without restriction. This is fully pro-choice. On the third and last portion, abortion is illegal except for the ? of the mother. This is the pro-life position. In the second (middle) portion, abortion is legal if the woman has gone through counseling and illegal if the woman has not gone to or has not gone through the full counseling program. The counseling program purpose is to show the woman options to keep the pregancy to birth. The congressional law will leave it up to the states to define when or how the first, second, and third portions of the continuum start and end. Liberal states may have the first portion longer to stretch out the pro-choice duration, and conservative states may have the third portion longer to lengthen the pro-life duration. The states will also decide what is the contents of the counseling program. Non-controversial things like adoption options are no brainer. However things like forcing the woman to look at the ultrasound picture of the fetus will have to be voted by the people in the state.

SOCIAL - Whistleblowing On Drug Usage

On December 8, there is an article on the Wall Street Journal about "Whistleblowers Worry SEC’s Interpretation of ‘Independent Analysis’ Could Discourage Tipsters. Although the whistleblowing is on corporate frauds, I wonder if the US can combat the drug usage by focusing on the consumption side by offering tipsters rewards. The "war on drugs" has 2 sides, the production side and the consumption side. The US tackles the production side by attacking the drug cartels in their countries and by limiting the drug trafficking into the US. This doodle is about the consumption side. If there are still people using drugs, if the US can have a drug kingpin arrested, a new one will take his place, since the money is still there. If people stop taking drugs, there is no money on the table, and the smart drug dealers will find something else to do. People continue to take drugs because this activity is mostly inside homes, not in the public. The US can have a whistleblowing program for drug usage like this. Anybody of money who is captured on camera taking drugs will not go to jail, but will have to go to rehabilitation AND also be penalized with say 10% of his networth. The money will be divided into half. One half will go to the government to pay for drug rehabilitation for people with and without money. The other half will be given to the tipster. For example a movie mogul with a networth of 100 M, will have to pay 10 M, with 5 M going to the tipster. Can the mogul still trust people around him when he takes his shots, especially now that everybody has a cell phone with camera?

BUSINESS - Warner Bros. to Release All 2021 Films on HBO Max and in Theaters Simultaneously

On Dec 3, 2020, Warner Bros. studio announced that they will release their whole slate of 2021 movies simultaneously in theaters and on its HBO Max streaming service. Movie theater owners, from the biggest chain to the mom-and-pop single cinema, decried that this strategy will kill their business. Who will go out to the movies if they can watch at home?

Instead of looking at this as an existential threat, movie theater chains should look at this as an opportunity to expand the film industry into a new horizon. Let's call this strategy the Theater Only Release (TOR) / Streaming Only Release (SOR) strategy. Instead of passively waiting for the studios to give them movies, the theater chains will work with the studios to customize movies in production for theater release only. The TOR movies may have extra or different scenes; they may have extra or different secondary characters; they may even have somewhat or totally different creative endings. In other words, for each movie, the studios will release a TOR version exclusively for movie theaters, and a SOR version exclusively for streaming services. The additional cost for versioning is not exorbitant since scenes that used to get cut during editing will now have good use; and dissimilarities can be planned as part of the script to reuse the actors, crews and locations.

Fans who cannot get enough of a movie will see both versions, lessening the cannibalization effect that the chains fear. With the TOR/SOR strategy, the traditional studios will differentiate themselves from streaming-only services such as Netflix. In addition the TOR/SOR strategy will help the DVD business since it is only on DVDs that one can find both versions in the same place.

Streaming is not the death knell of movie chains. The TOR/SOR strategy will be the carillon of a bright future.