Shrinking ad budgets and expanding critical freedom

Jeff Jarvis notes an LA Weekly article about movie studio plans to drastically cut ad buys for newspapers. One studio mogul is quoted delivering the following lament:

The only people who read newspapers are older and elitist. Movies like Sky High don’t need ads in The New York Times.

On the surface, this is bad for newspapers and probably bad for printed criticism. If major market papers see film ad revenues plummet, there’s a good chance they’ll cut their coverage, meaning even fewer full-time jobs for film critics. While The New York Times isn’t likely to fire Scott and Darghis anytime soon, it might mean significantly less work for their farm team critics like Dave Kehr or Dana Stevens. And smaller markets will have even less incentive to keep their weekly critics on the payroll, when syndicated critics with name brand recognition, lower outlay and easier disposability are just a few clicks away. The immediate upshot appears to be all bad.

But what if the studios and their smaller counterparts decide to take advantage of the “elitist” audience found reading print publications? If the film pages of newspapers can become the place for the growing number of modestly budgeted pseudo-indie films out there, films that would appeal to older, more “elite” audiences anyway, then it could be a boon for critics and criticism. If the film pages are ballooning with ads for smaller pictures, then critics might actually have more opportunity to cover small films and to make the editorial decisions about which movies to give prominence.

It’s long been the film critics’ lament that few outlets allow them to pick which films are featured and which ones are buried. Big budgets, big stars and big explosions almost always get priority coverage, whether or not they’re worthwhile. But without the financial push to play towards advertising hype, critics might well be given more leeway to designate which films get featured and which films get the shaft.

Certainly, there will still be a budget crunch. Smaller movies, by their nature, don’t have the gargantuan ad budgets of the blockbusters. But if it opens the door for critics to have more unrestricted freedom to feature what they want, it might not be the harbinger of doom LA Weekly suggests.