getting speaker wire from the front of the room to the back?

There are several ways depending on what you have and how much you want to spend.

1. If you have carpet, you can run the wire under the baseboard around the edge of the walls.

2. If you don' t have carpet you can add some crown moulding to the room and use the open area behind it to hide the wires. Just be sure not to nail into the wire. I'd probably tape the wire down the center of the back before mounting the moulding to the wall so it will all be easier to handle. It won't show once it's up and will keep the wire down the center and out of the way of nails.

Crown Moulding example
When placed diagonally in the corner between the ceiling and the wall you have an open area behind.

Corners may be tricky to leave space for the wire to turn 90 deg but you might be able to use these:

Inside corner crown block.

If you can run the wire up to the ceiling and then back down to your receiver, etc on an inside wall, it is likely to be non-insulated. This will make it easy to run the wire down the wall to jacks. Where you need the wire to be at the ceiling, drill a hole where the moulding will cover it (worst case you'll have to repair the hole and touch up paint). Then down close to the floor at the same height as your current wall outlets make another hole. Search the net for various ways to fish wire down a wall. The hole close to the floor needs to be large enough for this:

Low voltage outlet box

YouTube - How to install Low Voltage Outlet box

Put something like this on each end so you can connect to your speakers on one wall and your receiver, etc on the other.

Speaker wall jack

Depending on the size of the crown moulding, you could also run an ethernet cable. Then you would need something like:

Wall Plate

Speaker Jacks

Cat6 Ethernet Insert

3. Paintable Raceways for above baseboard

4. Not sure how this looks but there is this option replacing the crown moulding idea above:

Paintable Cornerduct

They also make a flat wire that tapes to the wall. You apply it, then paint over. If you have a crawlspace or basement, pull the wire through there. Otherwise, just cut along the drywall where the baseboard molding is, pull the wires along there, then replace the baseboards, after fixing the drywall, that you made holes in, to pull the wires.

It really isn't hard - just takes time. The previous poster also had a great idea. If the baseboard can easily be removed, remove it and cut a channel in the drywall if necessary (usually there is a gap between the bottom of the sheetrock and the floor which may be enough for wire), run the wire and put the baseboard back over the channel. Then you won't have to repair the drywall. I'm not good at repairing large holes or channels in drywall in visible areas so I avoid that option.

I do this type of stuff myself so I couldn't even guess at what someone would charge.