DVD Sales, Hollywood's Main Profit Source, Are Sagging

Conventional wisdom holds that Hollywood's fortunes go up when the economy goes down. People still crave entertainment, particularly of the escapist variety, and movies remain within the budgets of most people.

That may prove true this time around, too -- ticket sales have been particularly robust in recent weeks -- but studio prosperity stopped depending on box-office results a long time ago. DVDs propel profits these days, and there is a creeping dread in the movie capital that buyer interest is plummeting as the global economic crisis worsens.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[rabiddog6708]

I'm sure the sales of garbage like Kung Fu Panda will give them the boost they need.

[arvada]

As long as they shove their D.R.M at us I will never buy cd's or dvd's of anykind

[marijam]

Give us something that we are interested in, then maybe we'll buy. What can you expect when the industry has made a habit of ignoring all bu the younger crowd? The last dvd I bought was Iron Man and the next one is going to be True Blood Season 1.

[Eric8869]

You're buying movies based on comic books and blaming the industry for not making movies for grown ups? um..........

[jthomsen]

I understand that piracy hurts the "suits" not the artists - who get pretty much nothing out of the transaction.

Artists make their money performing... the suits [of a particularly noxious persuasion] are parasites.

So torrents... the great equalizer.... levels the playing field.

Everybody wins - but the parasites.

[Eric8869]

Why would you buy a DVD when you can rent it and copy it?

[shyamg22]

torrents!! :-)

[rabiddog6708]

I refuse to buy Blu-Ray until the Blu-Ray players come down to a reasonable price. The greedy companmies want far too much. Have they not learned anything since the days of laserdisc? The players and the discs were way too high an the average consumer did not buy them even though they were far superior to VHS. No one wanted to pay $70.00 + for a movie on laserdisc. I'm not paying $500 to $700.00 dollars for a Blu-Ray player when my DVD player is just fine.

[marijam]

Personally, I'm tired of trying to keep up. So is my 31 year old son.

[dnddays]

Piracy, DRM, crappy movies and movie glut. Combine that with a weak economy and you have a perfect storm deluging the movie studios. Do a visit to the-numbers.com and look at how many movies were released this year, compared to just 10 (or especially 20) years ago. You're bound to lose money just distributing so many films.

[emily00011]

Most movies are barely worth watching one time, why would a person want to bother buying DVD's when they would only just take up good space.

[Alvin4NY]

Especially if you live in New York City!

[Sundialsvc4]

If Hollywood intends to put so much of its future into "little plastic disks," why do they work so hard to make them "un-copyable" (which they aren't).

And, there's this little wire running into my house and into my computer ... into my iTV, oops, I mean my AppleTV. And what that would mean for Hollywood, if only they'd see the light, is zero-cost distribution. A movie or a television program as "software." Paid for by-subscription. Cost of goods sold = zero.

But they don't see such an obvious thing; nor does the RIAA. (We must remember that these are also the august people who fought bitterly against having radios in cars, and they hated the thought of the cassette tape.) If they understood the distribution side of their business as well as they do the production side, they'd make a whole lot more money at it.

[MetalCanuck]

CD's, DVD's, and especially Blue Ray are WAY to expensive. We need lower prices or we may have to stop buying.

Remember people, you have the power to lower prices by not spending. Its the only power you have left in this country. Prices rose so fast because of the incredible increase in credit usage since the mid 90's. Prices were rising then too but not at the rate of the past 7 or 8 years. We need to cut up the cards, Put money in a savings account, pay off debt then only buy what you can afford.

[DrJohnnySkeptic]

I buy used DVDs.

[TakLoufer]

Best way to go. Prices are ridiculously high otherwise, just like for CDs. Although, I did recently buy a dozen unopened titles from one of the discount chains for $3 apiece. They were all the kind of smart, IFC/Sundance-type flicks that don't sell well in conservative bedroom communities: The Squid & The Whale, Making Mr Right, Off The Map, Breakfast On Pluto, etc

[VivaZapata]

So many bad movies, so little time to waste.

[bluguy8]

I agree.......Way too many bad movies..I don't know how some of this crap even makes money .Time to get serious. make good movies or go away .

[jmpurser]

I think you've hit the nail on the head.

[Korinthe]

Yeah...umm...well. Maybe you should lower the price? How long has the CD and the DVD mediums been out? How much has the price lowered? It is simply unprecedented. It's no wonder everyone is moving to pure digital storage. You folks NEVER LOWER YOUR PRICES. When they first came out, I remember CDs were ~$12-15, and DVDs were ~$30-50. They are still the same frakkin' price! Inflation or no, that is the problem. What's more, my CDs that are over 10 years old still work very well indeed, whereas my newer ones degrade rather quickly. So, quality has gone down, and price has stayed the same.

It's simple, folks. Had you started lowering prices years and years ago, so that now CDs are a few to a half-dozen bucks, and movies are 10-15 bucks, you'd sell ALOT more product, and wouldn't see quite so much downloads and pirating. Sorry, but you've made your own beds on this one. You should have been driving prices down, and increasing manufacturing efficiency, and paying for R&D into the next best, newest, hippest technology much more swiftly. Now, you are suffering for your greed. Try harder next time, and follow the tried and true methods of business, not ripping people off with older tech at a lower quality (albeit, yes, the sound quality has gone up a little bit...but not a whole lot).

[Clintonwar]

Sorry MOM! I had to do this...Listen carefully to the last minutes of a soldiers life! http://www.myspace.com/Craftymusic Pass it on to everyone in your address book.