• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, March 7, 2007

TV marketing executives should take note of their older entertainment brothers: Movie studio marketers have found a way to save money on telling consumers what films to see.

All this happened while more people went to the movies than the year before, with a total of 1.45 billion tickets sold in 2006. Somehow this cost the studios 4.4% less to convince consumers to go, as average studio marketing costs went down.

Still, Hollywood lost ground in other ways -- increasing production costs 3.4% to an average $65.8 million per film.

This year's take was $9.49 billion, just a shade off the movie industry's big year of 2002. That's when domestic box office hit a record of $9.52 billion, with big pictures in the "Spider-Man," "Lord of the Rings," "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter" franchises dominating the charts. That year more people went to the movies than ever before -- admissions were at 1.64 billion.

Meanwhile, last year marketing seemingly was able to do more with less against even more movies, a record 604. Perhaps the increased number of mid-level or small, independent movies explains the smaller average movie-marketing budgets.

What can TV learn from this? That they should produce smaller TV shows? Surely, average TV ratings per show have decreased over the last decade or so, though this drop seems to have leveled off a bit in the last three years. No doubt producing lower-cost reality and game shows seems to be part of the fabric. Could they do more for less, even with scripted shows?

Marketing costs for launching a new, highly touted TV show can range from $2 million to $3 million.

Internet marketing is a big factor, as it is for most entertainment. Internet advertising dollars for theatrical films jumped to an average of 3.7% of a film's marketing budget, up from 2.6% in 2005 and just 0.9% in 2002.

Theatricals may have seemingly saved by lowering some newspaper and print media costs, which seem to be replaced somewhat by the Internet.

Internet marketing for TV has also climbed -- what with all the streaming of shows. TV needs to figure out its own marketing savings.