Consider the film market like the auto market.
As a company, do you want to consider manufacturing lower cost low quality cars that will sell because they are so cheap, people do not mind such as when it dies they can afford another. A Yugo or a better mid quality Fiero comes to mind.
Or do you as a manufacturer go for the high quality high value car that is going to last years and maintain value for years to come like a Lexus.
The cheaper made item is the tentpole item, can be made more in volume for price, does not have a long term value and the average consumer knows that it is not going to last. Yes, one of two cars might turn out to last on a long term, but in general they are meant to be short to mid term throw away investments. It is supportive as people will likely purchase, not because it is good, but the value or service culture of the organization set the bar on price versus quality low to equate enough value added to the consumer.
Tentpoles are names such because they provide a basic foundation of income. The average output product will provide a solid enough foundation of profit to allow other nicer projects to go ahead. The high quality projects have a bit of risk to them based on the higher cost of production and R&D. BUT... Many industries shy away from such because they do not want to take such risk. In the film industry, this is a HUGE issue, most studios do not want to take such risk and consider such a mentality to be too risky, better to turn out a mediocre product that one knows will in general always produce profits on average.
Brad Bird discusses such a mentality here:
Brad Bird Says Passion and Taking Risks Are Keys to Pixar's Success | FirstShowing.net
Eisners mentality was throw enough out there, somethings got to stick. Even of it is successful, drop such a franchise to move onto the next to keep the production volumes up. Dream Works in the past has looked to films that key in on op culture to easily make up a fun story line that has little substance. Sometime one will be better than others like Shrek, but most of the time you get films that for the moment look good and bring in crowds but are quickly forgotten. Don't get me wrong, Dream Works does make some good films, but in the beginning, they churned out more for the quick profit than to create a long term franchise.
Disney in the beginning did not want to do such. they built an animation studio that was beyond any other industry studio had ever dreamed of doing and Disney created magic on the big screen. Pixar did the same thing although even they had lost a bit of vision of product over profit when the Cars franchise marketing pushed for another film due to the money to be made in secondary product marketing for Cars II. Read the 2007 Disney annual report Page 31-32 on year round merchandising opportunities and you will get an idea why there was such a push for another Cars film.
Or to equate in in terms of operations management...
Some companies survives on the tentpole mentality. In production management operations, an ISO 1400 management mentality is to document how you do everything, but not how to change or improve your product. You will produce a decent to good product because you know exactly how it is produced generally. But you can turn out bad products because the end result is not the concern, its the production of the product that is the issue. You turn your production into a science of knowing exactly what you produce and how you produce it. That is basically the Hollywood machine.
Sigma Six shows how you can create a top quality product because you document every step and look at how to improve each individual point of production. ISO looks at the science of how one churns out products, Sigma Six looks into every detail how to continually improve the product. Its a bit riskier, there is more associated cost with such introspection, but in the end your end value to the consumer is increased. As an added benefit, your production cost drops down with creating a quality internal organization. Basically, this is what you are looking at with Pixar.
Just to note, I LOVE Pixars management and corporate organizational culture. I wish all companies would run on such principles. Not every company can do so due to resources and quality of personnel, But their corporate identity is what I dream every organization to inspire to be like. If you want to really get an idea of how Pixar grew to what is is, read "To Infinity and Beyond" to get an idea of what Pixar has done in operations management to create their success.
