Part 1: Theory, Methods, and Background
Work on this thesis began against the backdrop of an emerging crisis. Writing for trade magazine Rushprint I had interviewed several industry insiders who feared that the new digital home entertainment market was not sustainable, and that despite strong showings for local titles in cinemas, all was not well in Norway (Øfsti 2014a, 2014b, 2015a, 2015b, 2016).
While I approached this work with a sense of urgency and a wish to engage with “real” issues, it quickly became apparent that in order to answer the questions I wanted to pose - I also had to spend time developing and adapting theory.
The first issue I faced was that very little of existing theory could be easily applied to a small country like Norway. While traditions such as cultural industries studies, political economy approaches and media industry studies offered much, most contributions implied larger markets that could exist without public support.
The second issue I faced was the question of “distribution”. Studies of film and television distribution have increased recently, and with that a healthy discussion on the nature of “distribution” in general and “film distribution” in particular. However, the question about what “distributors” actually do, remains.
Finally, there was also the question of “availability”. While the lack of Norwegian movies in the new digital platforms caused worry, it was also unclear how availability should be understood in platforms with limited screen space and unlimited storage.
In Chapter 1 I examine these questions as well present and discuss other relevant theoretical contributions. The chapter draws on the sociology tradition of cultural industries studies and strategy theory originated from business schools to enable the analysis of the strategies of Norwegian distributors in Part 2. Chapter 2 presents the methods employed in this study.
Chapter 3 is a both short primer on the Norwegian film industry for unfamiliar readers, as well as an analysis of how the Norwegian film industry was impacted by digitalization.