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TV Straight to DVD
By Corvus | October 7, 2006
I got to thinking about quality television shows that don’t quite find their niche and therefore quickly find themselves without a home. Show’s such as the 1980′s Matt Frewer sitcom – Doctor Doctor, the most brilliantly odd sitcom since Soap – Arrested Development, and HBO’s uneven but compelling drama – Carnivale. I know that advertising revenue really drives the current television model, but I know that movie revenues are being more and more driven by DVD sales and rentals. So… mashup time!
Seriously, why aren’t we seeing episodic content delivered straight to DVD? It’d be easy for the consumer to justify dropping $15 a month on a DVD full of quality television programming and even easier to drop $20 or $25 every other month… even if the bimonthly DVD only contained four (quality) hours of programming.
That’s not even considering the movement represented by the rental market. Since season three of Arrested Development was released to DVD, we have seen a dramatic up-tick of rentals for the first two seasons as people seemingly have suddenly, just now, discovered the show.
I’m willing to bet that the major national rental chains (Netflix included, despite it’s chainless-ness) would even provide some funding for cutting those disks in exchange for an exclusive rental period… say, one year? Nothing would drive me to an inferior online service faster than a year’s worth of exclusive Arrested Development.
Tagged:dvd-release, Film, television-series. | 2 Comments »
October 7th, 2006 at 10:16 pm
Corvus:
It was rumored that AD cost 1.6 Million dollars per episode to shoot due to the cost of the cast and writers involved. Do you think they could recoup their investment in DVD sales alone? How many DVDs (or online episodes via iTunes) would need to sell per month to break even? I don’t think we’re quite there yet but in a few years (or with a less expensive show) this could be a possible delivery method, especially if it was electronically delivered from an online service (like iTunes) to a set top box on a subscription basis. Cut out the publishers and distributors completely and it would be even cheaper… hmm….
DREW
October 8th, 2006 at 12:45 am
Do I think they could sell 80,000 units? Well, let’s consider all the mark up down the supply chain… and say… could they sell 160,000 to 200,000 units?
I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound like a lot, does it? I’ll see if I can find any figures in the mags we get at work to see how well the 3rd season is renting.
Of course, once the consumer base is comfortable not getting a physical copy of the media (which according to recent surveys is not the case with movies), I imagine they could easily meet their sales goals, as you suggested.