According to a Variety story at videobusiness.com, Comcast has been pitching the following idea to studios:
Sensing that the financially troubled Blockbuster is ripe for plucking, Comcast is sounding out the Hollywood studios on the following proposition: A Comcast customer with a digital box will see a menu listing for, say, The 40-Year-Old Virgin as much as six weeks in advance of its scheduled appearance on pay-per-view…For a fee of about $17, the subscriber could call up the movie for one immediate video-on-demand showing. Two days later, the DVD of Virgin shows up in the mailbox for the subscriber’s permanent collection.
Mike Egan, cable consultant and partner in Renaissance Media, says Comcast’s idea is the boldest strategy yet devised to counter “the poor treatment Hollywood has always given cable PPV in the windowing of its movies.”
“For individual subscribers who want to see movies early and are willing to pay for the DVD,” Egan adds, “it’s a good deal.”…Major studios like Disney and Sony might spark to the proposition, he says, because “they could use Comcast as leverage against the big retailers,” such as Wal-Mart and Costco.
But there are skeptics:
Tom Eagan, media analyst with Oppenheimer & Co., said… [if] the buying of DVDs on cable poses a threat to the dollar volume from video store rentals, the studios might take a pass..And NPD’s [Russ] Crupnick said that cable TV’s brainchild could sink of its own weight because most cable subscribers are unlikely to be interested in ponying up $17 to own the DVD of the typical theatrical movie. Instead, they’ll wait for six weeks until it becomes available for $3.95 on PPV. Or, if they insist on seeing it right away, they’ll get to the corner store and rent it for $4.
Mitch Shapiro at 1:13 PM|Comments(0)
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