Every new messaging has brought studio complaints about how they're being killed with "word of mouth." Before Twitter, it was text messaging, Facebook, MySpace, "the web," email and, for all we know, AOL, television, FM radio, the telegraph and the passenger pigeon, which prevented hucksters from getting people to hand over money for what they think will be a good show, but really isn't.

So, here's the latest incarnation: Did you tweet about your disappointment in a movie, like Bruno? Did all your friends tweet back in agreement?

According to social media specialists, Universal is mad at you for driving away 73% percent of Bruno's ticket sales! When movie-goers take to their micro-blogging sites and hurl instant critiques at helpless studios, all their marketing machinery is rendered impotent. Some of this summer's alleged victims have included Bruno, Land of the Lost, and Year One.

After mega advertising campaigns, months of free publicity from hungry media outlets (and web sites looking for cheap content!), specialists hired to create Facebook fan pages and Twitter feeds, people insist on slagging summer movies on Twitter. Like, all Sascha and Universal wanted to do was expose the ugliness that lives in your heart through various stunts involving dildos and terrorists. Then you had to go off and mean about it. What's a matter with you?!

So how have the studios tried to harness the awe-striking a wrathful power of Twitter? Here's an example:

With Year One, Sony at first tried to get in on the action and created a promotional Year One twitter account that would cull all the posts tagged with "#yearone. Sad for Sony, though, most of those tags were attached to disparaging statements. So they tried to pivot and create their own Year One twitter meme!

But no amount of tweet co-opting could save the floundering flick (full disclosure, I have a soft spot for Biblical comedies that have fantastic Oliver Platt cameos, so I dug it — you're welcome, Sony!) But let's be honest here, Studios. Just between you and me, nobody else is listening right now: you really didn't expect that many people to go continue to see a shitty movie after it opened, right? You must have known that eventually people would talk. They'd tell other people how little they liked Will Ferrell screaming at the sky. Again. And though the time between seeing said shitty movie and then telling your buddies about how shitty the movie maybe has shortened thanks to twitter, you must have known from the beginning that you were pushing a shitty product.

So really there's only one way to combat the Twitter effect: Stop making shitty movies.

P.S. I really laughed during Land of the Lost! Sorry no one else did, Universal!

As Defamer points out:

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes cited a 60%-70% profit margin during a VOD trial for Warner Bros. films on cable — more than twice the return on Time Warner DVD rentals.

The good news: You can wait and watch Made of Honor on your iPod in about three months! The bad news: It'll cost you $14.99 to download it. (Or $9.99 three months after that.) And for digital media that costs exactly nothing to reproduce, package or distribute, we think that amounts to little more than information highway robbery. And just in time for the studios to stonewall SAG on new-media revenues!

Or maybe they're not quite connected — yet. Conceding it would get paid for new media when studios got paid, the WGA settled its strike in February by negotiating for roughly 2% of studios' online grosses each year through 2011. But in an earnings call yesterday, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes cited a 60%-70% profit margin during a VOD trial for Warner Bros. films on cable — more than twice the return on Time Warner DVD rentals. It's anyone's guess how that shakes out in terms of purchases, but with DVD sales last quarter at $3.5 billion, and with a fairly clear break between online and traditional media consumers, even a tenth of that revenue online would be enough for SAG president/time-bomb Alan Rosenberg to reinforce the hard line as the first round of negotiations come to a close Friday.

Moreover, as an observant tipster pointed out to us this morning, the markup on these downloads is pretty obscene, maybe even illegal. After piracy concerns were allayed in the last year, pricing was the only remaining sticking point for Apple — which wanted to keep purchases at $10 — and studios, which compromised at $15. Albums on iTunes cost an average of 40% less than their CD counterparts; but with online retailers and box stores pressuring DVD prices below $20, why should they get away with a difference as little as 15% in some markets — especially with no extra features or deluxe packaging? The courts have even addressed this before, but it usually applies to manufacturers complaining about suppliers, not the other way around. Someone! Get the FTC on the line!

• Purchase New Movies on iTunes [Apple]

Let's spell those out: Sony hates Apple for turning the iPod into the Walkman of the 21st century. Universal is owned by NBC, which has had a big spat with Apple over TV shows. As for Warner Bros. — which is no longer affiliated with Warner Music, the record label which signed a music-download deal with Apple rival Amazon.com recently — it's not clear what the competitive issue might be. But Warner did recently hire Thomas Gewecke, formerly an executive at the Sony BMG music group, to run digital distribution. He may not have fond memories of negotiating with Steve Jobs.