Celebrity Exchange To Begin Selling Data.

The 450,000 Hollywood Stock Exchange Web site subscribers who have been "buying" and "selling" fantasy stocks and bonds tied to the popularity of specific movies and celebrities will themselves be put up for sale this week.

Actually, it's data about them that will be sold.

Hollywood Stock Exchange has decided to go head to head with traditional market research firms by launching a new Web site this week -- hsxresearch.com.

"The business of market research has been in (our) game plan since the beginning," said Michael Bums, HSX co-founder and chairman. "Our customers will soon see that it's been worth the wait."

Whether or not the marketing of data will bear fruit remains to be seen.

HSX believes that, since the values of its fantasy stocks and bonds have been somewhat accurate predictors of which movies and celebrities will get hot, Hollywood studios will pay for access to its database.

For example, nearly 20 million shares of "The Blair Witch Project" traded in the year before the sleeper hit actually arrived on the big screen.

Independent research from the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, N.J., confirms that both actual and fantasy stock prices serve as very good proxies for hard polling information about buyers' perceptions and intentions.

"HSX's source of data is unusually high quality," said David M. Pennock of NEC. "It (has) a large number of people who care about specific products (movies). HSX is getting good information from avid fans -- information that's as good or better as random sampling."

Subscribing to HSX is free, and each person gets 2 million "Hollywood dollars" when they sign up. The subscriber is then free to use those Hollywood dollars to buy stocks (which are pegged to movies) and bonds (which are tied to celebrities). Stocks range from scripts for which the film rights have just been purchased to movies currently in release. And just as on Wall Street, the more HSX subscribers that buy shares in a particular movie, the higher the value of that movie's stock goes.

HSX plans to market its research to film studios and record companies, as well as to a secondary market of consumer package goods companies and finance firms. The data will be broken out into three levels of depth, and buyers will be billed from "several thousand to several hundred thousand dollars a year," depending on the detail of information they acquire, said recently appointed CEO Brian Dearth.

Making the Cut

A proprietary, internally developed software, "HSX Insider Trader," will be capable of spitting out six different reports providing long lead-time estimates of audience awareness, intention and box-office projections for upcoming movies and records.

The question is whether any studios are willing to pay for it.

"With the downturn, the major media companies are scaling back their research budgets," pointed out Aram Sinnreich, senior media analyst with Jupiter Media Metrix. "And no one's going to throw proven research out the window for unproven research. HSX research is going to be an extra line item in the budget at a time when public companies, with a responsibility to their shareholders, are looking to trim expenses."

"We're rolling out with conservative, realistic expectations," countered Dearth.

He pointed to the compelling nature of a large sample size of influential entertainment enthusiasts and the cost efficiencies of real-time research pulled from an existing database. He also made the case for a secondary market for "any company that wants an optic into the entertainment world."

"Consumer package goods companies are large consumers of information (about Hollywood), but they, operate in a vacuum," he said.

HSX research would help a Ray-Ban or Taco Bell from always attaching their product tie-ins to only the big-budget, heavily anticipated films -- as the two companies have done with "Men In Black 2" and "Spiderman."

Several industry insiders and studio executives, who would not speak for attribution, agreed that HSX research has value -- if offered for free.

But Dearth said the value of what he calls "behavioral data straight from our stock market" is a product that will generate revenues for HSX.

Dedicated subscriber base

"I'd like to think that what we're doing is a small bit evolutionary," he said. "We're offering a syndicated information product from a highly qualified, pre-screened demographic."

"It's a great pitch," agreed Sinnreich. "Corralling die-hard entertainment fans and getting their opinions, without filters, is absolutely of value. Any survey company would be happy to have HSX's dedicated band of 500,000 subscribers."

HSX needs to keep building its subscriber base and continue to be an accurate predictor of hit films and records for this shift in its business model to fly.

Sinnreich added that HSX might look to make money from its treasure trove of information by switching to a different business publishing model, such as selling the data to a print media partner like The Hollywood Reporter, or by being acquired, by a more traditional research company like ACNielsen Corp.

HSX launched in April 1996 and has financial backing from NBC Inc., Citigroup Ventures, Keystone Venture Capital, European broadcaster SBS Broadcasting and XL Ventures LLC.

The initial concept was to turn its trillion "Hollywood dollar" economy into hard currency and make the site a source for financing independent films. When that business model proved too difficult to implement, the company shifted gears.