Kyle Bylin, Associate Editor
In his article, Paul Suarez of PC World rightly observes that, “Hollywood has a problem. It’s red, boxy, lets you rent DVDs for $1 a night, and is severely threatening movie studios from making money. The threat is Redbox self-serve DVD rental kiosks outside McDonalds and in grocery stores.”
Further detailing how major motion picture company’s like 20th Century Fox have, “ordered its wholesalers not to sell DVD discs to Redbox until 30 days after a movie’s initial release to help boost retail sales.” This, in many ways, runs parallel the concerns about how iTunes has given fans the ability to cherry pick their favorite singles for 1$ and not purchase the entire album, which as many have found out is simply better than them not buying anything at all.
In the midst of all this, Paul says that, “The companies acknowledge their decisions will ultimately have an effect on the consumer, but without $15 per DVD, there is no movie industry.” Similar laments have been expressed by music executives, wherein, while they understand that singles need to be readily available for those whom would not like to purchase the whole album, without the album itself they firmly believe they cannot thrive in a singles-only business.
But, the problem doesn’t stop there, because within the movie industry, as Sharon Waxman argues: Social Networking Is Making Friday the Only Day That Counts. “The rise of social networking, studio executives say, is driving a near-instantaneous word of mouth effect that is doing much to hyper-charge Hollywood’s multi-million-dollar marketing efforts...” She writes, “Or to defeat them a lot faster than usual,” which can be devastating for big-budget releases.
While show goer’s text messaging...
from their cell phones in the theater to tell friends not to go to the movie used to cause a small ripple in the pond of avid and apathetic fans alike. Now, with the possibility for those same goers to twitter out to their seemingly much larger followings, huge waves are cresting on the shore of the movie industry’s doorstep by Friday evening, east coast time. In turn, a positive message could stem a much more desired effect for the movie industry.
However, Tuesday for the Record Industry shares the same fate, but for releases that show up on file-sharing networks too early, it’s possible that by the time that highly coveted day rolls around some fans will have already moved onto testing out other albums that they deem to be more interesting. Such parallels between the movie and music industries are striking. And, serve as a great reminder that neither of the business models are safe in this changing media landscape.
