Download Hollywood and its Foreign Markets in the Studio Era: A Fresh Look

Department of History 歷史系
Hollywood and its Foreign Markets in the Studio Era:
A Fresh Look at the Evidence
Speaker: Dr. Peter Miskell
Senior Lecturer, Henley Business School at the University of Reading
Date: 28 November 2012 (Wednesday)
Time: 5:00 - 6:15pm
Venue: MBG01
Abstract
The international appeal of Hollywood films through the twentieth century has been a subject
of interest to economic and film historians alike. This paper employs some of the methods of
the economic historian to evaluate key arguments within the film history literature explaining
the global success of American films. Through careful analysis of both existing and newly constructed datasets, the paper examines the extent to which Hollywood’s foreign earnings were affected by: film production costs; the extent of global distribution networks, and also the international orientation of the films themselves. The paper finds that these factors influenced foreign
earnings in quite distinct ways, and that their relative importance changed over time. The evidence presented here suggests a degree of interaction between the production and distribution
arms of the major US film companies in their pursuit of foreign markets that would benefit
from further archival-based study.
Biography
Peter Miskell has been based at the University of Reading since 2001, where he currently holds
the position of Senior Lecturer in Business History. His primary research interest is in the evolution of international business in the twentieth century. His work, to date, has focussed mostly
on the film industry, and the fast moving consumer products sector. Both industries have been
dominated by global oligopolies where leading firms have sought to promote global brands /
products to a heterogeneous body of consumers in culturally diverse markets. His work seeks to
explore how these large multinational enterprises have responded to local differences in consumer demand, as well as participating in broader processes of globalisation, ‘Americanisation’,
and European integration. His work has been widely published in journals such as Business History, Enterprise and Society and the Economic History Review. His mongraph, A Social History
of the Cinema in Wales: Pulpits, Coalpits and Fleapits was published by the University of
Wales Press in 2006.
All are welcome
Enquiry: Felix Tsang (2616-7433/[email protected])
Please visit www.ln.edu.hk/ccs/ for more details.