Just received an email announcing the final edition of PCR has been published and the service has ended/ is ending with the website closing down at the end of march.
Gosh, this marks the end of an era. In the first few years of my career I got several decent jobs via PCR. Latterly, however, I went online and stopped using PCR. I guess they couldn't keep up with the market as users like me switched to sites like this one.
Yep, heard about that elsewhere, but still feel it's a shame. Although only a (relatively) recent graduate, I did use it to source jobs when I first came out of drama school - and that was partly because I was introduced to it as the actors job seeking bible many years prior, in the days when I only did pro jobs on/off, but met a lot of experienced career performers en route.
I do wonder, given that PCR were not *so* far behind the times that they didn't start developing website functions in the last half decade quite why they are folding the whole company, though. They *had* developed a slightly odd online model, whereby you could only really access the web material by technically paying for the continued delivery of the mail out, but I wouldn't have thought that would have proved an insurmountable problem to overcome had the will been there. I can understand ditching the paper mail outs because they simply can't keep pace with the current market. I can only guess it may be a loss of subscriber interest, a loss of advertising interest...or maybe even, a loss of interest in the market on PCR's behalf that has ensured the folding of *everything*. When you're an institution that has been around since 1968, it has to be said a lot of changes are going to develop in the industry over the period!
Odd, perhaps, that there was so little prior warning it was coming, however; to judge from the most recent Twitter streams for example, PCR is still very much in business, very eager to promote its wares.
Well, as to Spotlight's continued survival, yes, I am absolutely certain that they will survive and thrive in the years to come: indeed, it could be effectively argued that Spotlight is *more* dominant in the marketplace in the early 21st century than it ever has been.
Without a shadow of a doubt in 2013, the vast majority of all agency mediated castings are brokered by way of the Spotlight link; many agents refuse point blank to take on clients without Spotlight listing for this reason; casting directors swear by the use of the service, and unrepresented actors have been encouraged to use the castings board as a potential job sourcing tool to such an extent that it is now quite valid to begin to question whether Spotlight still functions primarily as a directory or as a job finding service.
A great many are of the opinion that the scrapping of the paper directories is long overdue...and it would appear that Spotlight primarily continue to print them for the sake of pleasing industry traditionalists. But divesting itself of the printed directories is one thing; imagining that Spotlight would somehow be weakened by the loss of a tool that it has, in effect, superseded is quite another. I don't see Spotlight monopoly collapsing anytime soon.
I do not like agencies that dictate that I must pay an up-front fee - to a third part - otherwise I will not be represented.
Call me old fashioned, but I think I have the right to decide if I want to go into a particular casting directory.
I choose to be in Castingcallpro. No one is going to blackmail me into using a duplicate directory - run by a monopoly.
Agents should not have a right to demand this. Most agents do however. I happen to think this is wrong. I have told the government this, very recently.
We should all have the choice...
Currently there is no choice!
I am not going to keep these 'fat cats' in their luxury lifestyles. They are multimillionaires - at our expense.
Most performers do not share my view. They want to keep the status quoi as it is. Their idea is, if it works, don't fix it.
Well I do not subscribe to this. Anyone can set up a casting directory on the Internet. What was fine in 1927, may not be fine in 2015...
The Internet has matured. Paper is redundant. If hirers want paper, then let them pay 100% of the cost. Performers should no longer subsidise 'paper' directories.
Agents should no longer demand up-front fees to third parties... It is anticompetitive!
That is my view on this industry. Forget the past, you cannot change the past. However, you can change the future...
I always found PCR ads outdated in the 1980s and one TV company was up in arms when PCR advertised an "audience" job because what they had wanted was a quiz master...hundreds of wasted letters!
No...not sorry to see it go to be honest.
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