Well, theatre people thought they were greatly in trouble when moving pictures came around. And it's true, unfortunately, live theatre attendence has dropped. But this could also be due to the price of admission and the change in our culture away from more "literate" forms of entertainment. Of course, there's the "which came first" argument - did theatre attendence drop because of admission prices and the dumbing-down of the culture or did admission prices go up and the culture get less interested in more literate entertainment because of the rise in popularity of movies? Which, I feel, can be directly compared to TV today and the reality-based programs that proliferate on our channels. Obviously, it is cheaper to produce reality TV and people just eat it up. This is caused by the availibility of technology and it's relatively low price.
Also, just anybody feels like they can be Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg or Penny Marshall (had to include a woman in there). Is this a good thing? What do you think?
In short, I don't know the answer to these questions and am interested in your opinions. Any predictions?