Quote:
Originally Posted by gideongallery
of course the copyright holders could stop access shifting from being established because of this ambiguious deterministic effect by simple getting ahead of the ball and dropping the unreasonable staggered liciencing release the movie in the theaters, on the internet on dvd at the same time, and let the channel distribution capacity fill the regional void. competition between channels would keep prices reasonable and expand the revenue streams of the actual content producers (all though the middle men distributers would get squeezed).
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This is a key point. I hear a lot of people argue that this is how it should be done. That a movie should be released in theaters, on DVD, on pay per view and paid download all on the same day. This way anyone anywhere could see it when they wanted and in what format they wanted and the movie would make more money.
For some movies that might be true. A movie like The Dark Knight or Transformers that has a huge built in audience and is immune to critics reviews could do huge business that way. Would it be more than it would end up being using the traditional marketing means of releasing it into different formats over time? Maybe and maybe not.
However there are a lot of movies that would simply fail using this method. Take for example the movie I used in the previous theory. A movie get released in NY and LA and it gets really good reviews and it does good business. They then decide to move it out to a wider release. So over the next 3-5 weeks they move it into major markets around the country. And it preforms well. It continues to get good reviews and sell a good amount of tickets so they continue to release it and within another 3 weeks it is playing nationwide in many theaters. It does really well overall so 4-5 months later when it comes out on DVD it gets a large release and has built up a lot of word of mouth so it sells well on DVD and rents well on DVD and pay per view. That performance will directly effect how much they then get for the sale to premium cable like HBO or Showtime and regular cable and broadcast TV. So the slow roll out really helped this movie build momentum.
If you released it in every format on day one it may have done some business, but it would have been harder for them to build up the word of mouth. The marketplace is crowded and there is a very good chance that instead of building up a good word of mouth and turning that into a lot of business the movie would have been lost in the crowd and just become another title on the shelf.