I actually hear through the grapevine, it's all the animosity towards them in general.
Regards, Art.
Perhaps Art you could speak through the grapevine back to them
All you need to say is that people using their films, well Champions), colour papers etc would just like a chance to have proper dialogue with the divisions in the company.
Perhaps if they got some positive dialogue going with customers/users their attitudes might change. Many of us use their film, many probably used their B&W papers, a few will use their colour paper.
They can't undo their decisions, like dropping B&W papers, but ironically if they hadn't then other companies in that field companies like Ilford would have disappeared.
Unfortunately as a company Kodak senior management are almost totally forgetting the past and the foundations of the company, but you need to look back to go forward. Kodak built a name for brand loyalty, and supplied the whole of the market place from Box Brownie to LF camera, and every thing else required. They need to find something new, trying to emulate Hewlett Packard or Epson is too late.
Perhaps they need to be a bit more adventurous to attract new innovators/innovations which might pave the way for a bright new future. At the moment all they are doing is using the legacy of the brand name to sell their new products into an already mature market place.
So Art if you can feed something back, this is an analog format, we only want to discuss film, chemicals & papers. But we want Kodak as a whole to remember there is still a huge demand for film worldwide, which they depend on, and secondly respect us as photographers and help us where they can.
Is that too much to ask.
Ian