Somebody wrote recently to complain that ‘all the reporters ever talk about in relation to LOTR is the money.’

Articles like the following, from digitrends.net make me sympathise with him. According to this we’re all ‘Consumers’ and things like ‘The Lord of the Rings’ are just ‘Properties.’ (I’m still not sure if that’s more or less insulting than referring to books and music etc as ‘Product’) .

“RealNetworks Helps Launch Tolkein Film [sic]

“New Line Cinema’s “Lord of the Rings” film trilogy is one of the most greatly anticipated film series of the new millennium. The studio is shooting all three installments concurrently and will release one a year through 2003. And with a little less than a year before the first film hits theaters, the marketing push is already underway. New Line and RealNetworks have formed a four-year partnership to jointly promote the movies. The two companies will create and promote the Lord of the Rings RealChannel as the exclusive online source for all material from the making of the three films. Through the month of January, the Lord of the Rings trailer will be available only via the RealPlayer and the Lord of the Rings RealChannel.

“The Lord of the Rings RealChannel will set a promotional benchmark that is unparalleled and marks the most significant entertainment Internet promotion to date,” says Gordon Paddison, senior vice president, Worldwide Marketing and Business Development, New Line Cinema. “In addition to establishing an ongoing relationship with the broad fan base for the Trilogy, this promotion with RealNetworks is in line with our strategic marketing objectives to expand our Internet marketing reach to include hundreds of millions of consumers who currently may not have any exposure to the property.”