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DVD Observation

D

**DONOTDELETE**

Guest
We've had occasional discussions about the potential sales numbers for the B5 DVD.

I was just flipping through "Billboard" and noticed that "Stargate SG-1: Season Two Giftset" made Billboard DVD sales chart at position #39.

Though it hasn't been unusual to see box sets for the Sopranos or Friends in higher positions, I thought this was something comparable to B5...a better benchmark so to speak.

Thus, it is possible B5 may make the top 40 when it comes out.
 
what really interest me - how does WHV shares a cost of B5 DVD-s? Does UK-s part of WHV have to pay a licence fee or is it just "one big company"? Who is paying for making extras etc. and who makes profit?

And when DVD-s in UK are big hit but sales are low in USA?
 
Sigma--

I believe that WHV is one big global company--or rather, one part of the Warner Brothers/AOL/Time juggernaut of a corporation. Thus, the video franchising, and the DVD component of that, are all paid "out of pocket" as it were. The company figures out the logistics and costs of creating a suitable DVD package--extras, packaging, (hopefully) affordable price and so on--and after all is said and done, finally releases the disc (or in this case, boxed set). Then, any and all profits stay "in house", and come back to WHV.

As to why DVD sales are big in the UK, but sluggish in the US, I coudn't really say. Sales are growning every year, and I've noticed a startling lack of tapes in my local media stores. More and more space is given to DVDs these days. Part of the problem is that prices are seemingly given out at whim. I've seens movies loaded with extras and features for as little as $15, and a disc with not much besides the feature film with a price tag of $28. What the movie is, its popularity or name recognition doesn't seem to matter much here in the US. Maybe someone from the UK could give us an insight for the sales practices there? Please?

Also, the Brits are a spoiled lot. The programming there typically has some of the finest character- and plot-driven writing on the planet. Here in the US, it's "what concept can we steal/copy from/"adapt" this week?" A show like B5, with its strong characters, lengthy plot threads--five years long!--are almost unheard of. With not too many exceptions, US TV is episodic in nature. By that, I mean that this week's episode will have little or no impact on what is said or done next week. In B5, in contrast, the actions of Ivanova/Sheridan/that Mantis critter had *consequences*. Those people learned as we watched; grew and evolved. I laughed at Londo during most of S1, because the Centauri was such a clown. By the end of the season--and for the next four years after, he became one of the darkest creatures ever put on film, only to try his damnedest to redeem himself by the end of the run. I dare anyone to find a similar growth in any chatacter of any US series.

For the folks on the other side of "the Pond", writing like that is a far more common occurance, and therefore, with such a wonderful product--and production--people are far more willing to shell out the shekels for the discs when they become available.

IMHO. Does that help?

LordRemy
 
</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
I believe that WHV is one big global company--or rather, one part of the Warner Brothers/AOL/Time juggernaut of a corporation. Thus, the video franchising, and the DVD component of that, are all paid "out of pocket" as it were.

[/quote]

Yes, it is all part of the big corporation, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are anywhere near that centralized and sensible about how to actually do these things. It is not uncommon for different units within a large company to really (not just funny money transfers to themselves) charge each other for goods and services, and at full retail rate. Internal divisions on the company organizational chart sometimes have a harder time working with each other than either side would have working an outside partner. Remember back when a new home was being sought for Crusade the word from JMS was that the WB network was NOT an option. Internal politics made that less likely than getting an unrelated corporation to pick it up.

What the current situation is at Time-Warner in particular (specifically the regional breakdown of WHV), I have no idea. It may be that everything works as logically as you suggest. I just know that it is not something that you can assume just because it is all part of the same big conglomerate.


On the topic of DVD sales: Are British sales of DVD's of TV shows that much better (in general) than the in the US. I know that this was true for VHS sales. However, the proliferation of TV titles being released to DVD (which never happened to anywhere near the same degree in VHS) is due to the fact that the DVD's of those have already been released have done well.

Of course, it is possible that there isn't a overall difference in the two countries any more but that there could still be a signifcant difference for a particular show, such as B5. That is a separate issue.
 
Savant:

How is that list compiled? Do all of the pre-orders for the last few months roll into the sales number for the first week? Are the Billboard numbers based on actual retail sales or on units shipped (so that majority of initial shipments could conceivably sit on store shelves for months)?

If all of the pre-orders count toward the first week's sales then I definitely could see B5 cracking the list for that week. I'm less sure that it would be likely to stay there for very long.
 
Warner Bros. is not one big corporation, but a loosely knit collection of semi-independent (and often feuding) feifdoms. JMS often complained about how the right hand didn't know what the left was doing over there, and how hard it was to get anything going with a home video release because Warner Home Video, Warner Technical Operations and Warner Bros. Television were never on the same page.

However, it does appear that in the past year or two Warner Home Video, Inc. has been reorganized as a more unified organization. At least the broad decisions on releases in most territories are now made in Burbank, CA. I suspect that Warner Home Video, Ltd. in the U.K. is now a subsidiary of the American company, so the revenues should all flow to the same place, and the costs of things like extras should be spread around.

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
As to why DVD sales are big in the UK, but sluggish in the US, I coudn't really say.

[/quote]

DVD sales aren't sluggish in the U.S. as compared to the U.K. Both in absolute terms (becuase of a much larger population) and in per capita terms DVD is much bigger in the U.S. than it is in either the U.K. or the rest of Europe. I think someone was projecting that B5 might not sell as well here on DVD as in the U.K. because of the earlier experience with VHS, and the general difference in the success of TV shows on VHS in the two countries. However, the DVD situation is not at all analogous.

In general:

Until comparatively recently the "secondary market" (independent local broadcast stations and second-run cable/satellite networks) in Britain was much smaller than in the U.S. Between VHS and UHF most TV markets in the U.S. have always been served by between three and six TV stations, of which no more than three were network affiliates. (Many markets, like New York and Los Angeles, had many more stations.) This was before the advent of cable and satellite. So there were a lot of TV stations with a lot of hours to fill - which they mostly did with reruns of shows that had ended their network runs. Almost every show that last more than four or five seasons on the networks went into reruns for years immediately thereafter. This was not the case in the U.K. because there weren't all those stations hungry for content.

As a result there was a audience willing to pay to own a favorite series on bulky, expensive VHS tapes in the U.K. but there wasn't a similar market in the U.S. We could watch our favorite shows in endless reruns for free. Why buy them, especially on a medium that deteriorated with every play?

Only a handful of TV shows with a strong "cult" following were ever successful on home video in the U.S. prior to the advent of DVD - Star Trek The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone (the originals) - being the prime examples. Even a show like The X-Files didn't sell well enough to be released in full seasons. Fox only issued a few "best of" collections.

In the specific case of B5 there were a couple of additional factors that led to the differetial success on VHS:

1) In the U.K. each season was released on VHS not long after it finished airing. In the U.S. the first tapes didn't go on sale until the series was out of production.

2) By the time the U.S. tapes were released, DVD had arrived. The British release was nearly finished by the time DVD players first went on sale, and were long over before the technology acheived any significant market penetration. A lot of people thought that the series would eventually be released on DVD and looked askance at the belated VHS and laserdisc release. (The LDs arrived a few months after the first tapes.)

3) Less than six months into the VHS release a Warner Bros. exec let slip that preliminary work was being done on a DVD release. VHS and LD sales immediately dried up. By the time it became clear that Warner Bros. had quietly shelved the DVD idea, it was too late, the other releases had been cancelled. (The LD release was almost certainly doomed in any event, since Image Entertainment, which produced the LDs under license, got out of the dying laserdisc business entirely within a year.)

The durable, high-quality and long-lasting DVD format has proven the perfect way to release TV series on home video. They are cheaper to produce and buy than VHS tapes, more compact to store, and offer far higher quality than even the original broadcasts (unlike the lower quality of commercial VHS tape vis a vis broadcast standard.) With the customary extras, TV shows have proven enormously successful on DVD in the U.S., a fact which has not been lost on the studios. The pioneer of the full-season set over here was the same X-Files that couldn't be sold adequately on VHS.

So I expect B5 to do at least as well over here, per capita, as it does in the U.K. - especially S2, S3 and S4, which nobody was able to buy on LD or VHS, as people in the U.K. could. And yes, the pre-order numbers will factor into the first week sales figures for the B5 S1 set in Billboard. They will do so regardless of whether those figures are based on actual retail sales or shipments to retailers. Most DVD retailers promise that the discs will ship by the release date at the latest - meaning they have to order a set for every pre-order. In addition they have to order stock to meet the demand that the official release date and word-of-mouth will bring in later. Brick and mortar retailers like Best Buy and Circuit City, which also have web sites, may use on-line pre-orders to estimate the number of units needed for their stores. So it should all help to give B5 a pretty good showing for that first week. OTOH, it should be remembered that The X-Files and ST:TNG have full-season sets arriving on the same day, and I'm not even sure which hot theatrical titles are also being released on November 5th. (Spiderman debuts on Friday November 1st, in part to avoid being lost in the usual "release day Tuesday" clutter.) So B5 S1 could sell fantastically well and still not make the Billboard list, which has only so many slots on it. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

Regards,

Joe
 
Joe,

Just one question... how the heck do you know so much about this stuff??? /forums/images/icons/smile.gif /forums/images/icons/wink.gif /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

Oatley1
 
</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
Just one question... how the heck do you know so much about this stuff???
/forums/images/icons/wink.gif /forums/images/icons/wink.gif /forums/images/icons/wink.gif

[/quote]

I have way too much time on my hands these days. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

Regards,

Joe
 
He's a vorlon. The question you should be asking is not how he knows so much but why he choses to answer in more than 3 words.
 

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