Sunday, August 05, 2012

Article: Nine Great American Companies That Will Never Recover - 24/7 Wall St.

4. Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S)

Sprint finally posted some reasonably good results recently. However, these could not mask the fact that the No. 3 wireless carrier is too small to ever gain any ground on AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and Verizon Wireless. Sprint’s revenue rose rapidly from 2002 t...

http://247wallst.com/2012/08/01/nine-great-american-companies-which-will-never-recover/3/

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2 comments:

Pagan said...

Offtopic: I didn't want an entire post for this:

From Soaps to Dirtier Bollywood

FILM CITY, India—On a movie set in this Mumbai suburb, men in fluorescent green pants, sparkling green shirts and orange net undershirts are shaking their hips to a blaring song. They turn their backs to the camera, drop their pants and display boxer shorts. One pair is bubble-gum pink with "squeeze" emblazoned across the back.

The number is from a recently released movie titled, "We Are Super Kool." An adult comedy, it is the latest film from producer Ekta Kapoor. In the past couple of years, the 37-year-old has sought to transform herself from the top producer of India's conservative daily soap operas—the biggest hit she produced was a long-running saga called "The Mother-in-Law Was Once a Daughter-in-Law, Too"—into a producer of unconventional movies.

India's Ekta Kapoor is a producer of Bollywood R-rated films and new genres like horror.

Her big-screen efforts display plenty of skin and sex, in contrast to the "no-kissing, song-and-dance-routine" Bollywood films that have dominated the box office for years.

Ms. Kapoor, whose movie record until two years ago was a string of conventional flops, is now enjoying success, in part due to broader changes taking place in India's film industry.

Bollywood, India's Mumbai-based Hollywood equivalent, generates $2 billion in sales a year, according to consulting firm KPMG—about 20% of its American counterpart. It churns out some 170 movies in Hindi a year and dubs about 90 more into Hindi from regional Indian languages. Of the total, only about 20% recover their costs, said Komal Nahata, a trade analyst in Mumbai.

But new alternate genres have sprouted, including horror films, gangster movies, R-rated films (albeit with about as much raunchiness as an episode of "Sex and the City") and adult comedies. These films have been helped in their quest for viewers by the emergence of multiplex cinemas, DVDs and satellite rights, as well as by a youthful audience that is eager for variety.

Most of these films are low-budget, with young, little-known actors. They cost anywhere from $350,000 to $4.5 million, much less than the average $15 million that it costs for a mainstream Bollywood movie. And they net returns on average of 1.5 times to three times, said Mr. Nahata, far above all but the biggest Bollywood hits. It is in this expanding genre that Ms. Kapoor is seeking to capitalize.

One of Ms. Kapoor's first critically acclaimed launches was "Love, Sex and Betrayal" in 2010. The movie, made on a shoestring budget using hand-held cameras, explores the themes of the title through three short stories.

Last year, Ms. Kapoor made a film loosely based on an Indian soft-porn actress called Silk Smitha. Titled "The Dirty Picture," the movie was among the top 10 at the box office in 2011 and garnered favorable reviews and mountains of publicity.

Ms. Kapoor has now signed up Sunny Leone, a Canadian porn actress of Indian origin, for a coming horror flick.

Unknown said...

There were a few companies that didn't appear on the list and appear heading for the grave yard and they are sears, best buys k-mart and I agree with the other readers that face book should be included. The latter company was over-hyped and price was insane and it started to take on water very quickly. You will know them by their fruits.