vashti1999
10-18-2004, 04:16 PM
Old TV shows never die...
By Mike Snider, USA TODAY
Consumers are snatching up old and new TV favorites on DVD as quickly as studios can release them.
TV shows on DVD are one of the fastest-growing trends in the home video business. "Owning these things has become very infectious," says Don Rosenberg, publisher of Video StoreMagazine, which hosts the second TV DVD Conference in Los Angeles Tuesday with The Hollywood Reporter and the Digital Entertainment Group.
Among indicators that the TV-on-DVD boom won't be subsiding anytime soon:
•The number of shows on DVD is rising. For the first nine months of 2004, 470 TV-on-DVD titles were released, up from 440 the same period last year, according to The DVD Release Report. And multidisc sets are up 77% over last year.
•Sales are surging. TV DVD sales will top $2 billion this year, up from $1.5 billion last year, estimates Video StoreMagazine. TV DVDs now represent about 10% of all DVD purchases.
•There's no end in sight. Over the next four years, Merrill Lynch predicts 30% annual growth for the genre. Consumer spending on TV DVD products will reach $3.9 billion in 2008, Wall Street analyst Jessica Reif Cohen says.
Driving the trend: profits. DVDs are fairly cheap to make, and studios already have paid for the production. By putting a TV series on DVD — often without any extras — studios can make $8-$30 for each season-long DVD set sold, Cohen says.
The first-season DVD of Comedy Central's Chappelle's Show is the best-selling individual TV DVD set, eclipsing the 2 million mark. Cohen estimates that Paramount breaks even after selling just 13,000. If subsequent seasons each sell about 3 million, Chappelle's DVDs could eventually generate $54 million for the studio.
Fox could take in $235 million for all 15 seasons of the top-selling DVDs of The Simpsons, she says.
The popularity of TV on DVD doesn't surprise Gord Lacey, creator of TVShowsonDVD.com. Viewers connect to TV shows differently from how they connect with movies, because they spend more time with the characters each week, he says. Even flop TV shows have fans.
"It's amazing how there are lesser-known shows that achieve this cult following," Lacey says. DVDs represent "a way the shows can live on."
TV shows rerun profitably on DVD
By Mike Snider, USA TODAY
That the Seinfeld gang of Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine would end up on DVD was only a matter of time, but Raj, Dwayne and Rerun?
The 28-year-old urban comedy that aired for three seasons on ABC, What's Happening!! wouldn't seem to be a title on the must-list to be turned into a series of DVDs. (Related story: Old TV shows never die...)
But Columbia TriStar knew that there were thousands of fans of the series who were interested in having it on DVD, based on responses to a poll taken on the Sony Pictures home video Web site.
"We had released Sanford and Son and The Jeffersons to pretty good success," says Benjamin Feingold, president of Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment. "I thought it was the next thing in our library that needed to come out."
Since its release in February, What's Happening!! — The Complete First Season DVD has sold about 100,000 copies — not as much as Sanford and Son or the millions that Seinfeld is expected to sell when it is released Nov. 23. But it was profitable enough that two weeks ago, the studio released the What's Happening!! second-season DVD set (three discs, $30).
"Television on DVD is probably the fastest-growing segment of the industry," says Ken Graffeo of Universal Studios Home Video. "There are a lot more releases, and retail is putting more emphasis on them."
Retailers from Best Buy to Wal-Mart are increasing the amount of shelf space dedicated to TV DVD product.
Several factors explain the expanding wave of TV DVDs:
•Fans are demanding titles, even of cult hits. Since the onset of DVD, studios have been besieged by die-hard fans who want to add collections of shows like the sci-fi series Sliders and Tales of the Unexpected and the satirical cop comedy Sledge Hammer! to their DVD stashes. "A lot of it has been requests coming from consumers," Graffeo says of the Sliders release. "What we have done is really line up what we have fielded out to be the most popular shows consumers have asked for."
•DVDs can help sell TV shows and movies. For the release of the '70s series Starsky & Hutch, Warner Home Video released the first season on DVD the same week in March that the feature film starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson opened. The TV series' second-season DVD coincided with the movie's DVD release.
"We don't know how many fans there were wanting Starsky & Hutch (the TV series on DVD), but all of a sudden you do a movie and millions of people see it and some say, 'That movie is great, I'll go get the DVD (of the series),' " says Don Rosenberg, publisher of Video Store Magazine.
Meanwhile, Universal released American Dreams — Season One Extended Edition on Sept. 7 just before the new season began "because that is when momentum is there," Graffeo says.
Fox is hoping to boost the audience for its Emmy-winning series Arrested Development by releasing a collection of the first season's episodes on Tuesday (three discs, $40) The new season premieres Nov. 7.
The approach has worked for Fox before. In September 2002, two weeks before the second-season premiere of 24, Fox released the first season on DVD. "When the show launched, its second-season ratings were up," Fox's Steven Feldstein says.
•There's a reason they call it classic TV. Beloved series such as Sanford and Son, Laverne & Shirley and Happy Days hold up well against today's programming.
And a time-tested TV series already has "a core audience," Feingold says. "In the case of Sanford and Son, it's a piece of cultural history. These days, there's a shortage of African-American programming in general."
Even obscure series are finding an audience on DVD. Take the '90s late-night comedy series Mr. Show.
The show's co-hosts, David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, were met with fans begging for the show on DVD while on a promotional tour for the book Mr. Show: What Happened?, written by Odenkirk's wife, Naomi.
"There is a fanatical Mr. Show fan base, and if we get the product in the right place and market it in the right way, they will buy it," says Cynthia Rhea, senior vice president of marketing for HBO Video.
But Rhea worries that TV DVDs might become "too much of a good thing. I fear there will be some process of natural selection."
As TV DVDs have proven successful, the inevitable hurdles have arisen. The arrival of Seinfeld on DVD —Seinfeld Seasons 1 & 2 and Season 3 (four discs each, $50) in stores Nov. 23 — was complicated when co-stars demanded compensation for their work on DVD extras. Finally, the stars were cut in on a portion of DVD sales.
While studios deal with inevitable complications, creators of current series are looking to the future. American Dreams executive producer Jonathan Prince re-edited the shows for DVD to include entire musical performances of acts such as Usher. Now in stores, the $90 DVD has extras that include original clips from Dick Clark's American Bandstand. "You actually have hard-core black-and-white footage that hasn't been seen," Prince says.
TV producers have to start considering both markets, Prince says. "We have to start shooting shows differently because DVDs will be an important part of the market."
• Contributing: Thomas K. Arnold
By Mike Snider, USA TODAY
Consumers are snatching up old and new TV favorites on DVD as quickly as studios can release them.
TV shows on DVD are one of the fastest-growing trends in the home video business. "Owning these things has become very infectious," says Don Rosenberg, publisher of Video StoreMagazine, which hosts the second TV DVD Conference in Los Angeles Tuesday with The Hollywood Reporter and the Digital Entertainment Group.
Among indicators that the TV-on-DVD boom won't be subsiding anytime soon:
•The number of shows on DVD is rising. For the first nine months of 2004, 470 TV-on-DVD titles were released, up from 440 the same period last year, according to The DVD Release Report. And multidisc sets are up 77% over last year.
•Sales are surging. TV DVD sales will top $2 billion this year, up from $1.5 billion last year, estimates Video StoreMagazine. TV DVDs now represent about 10% of all DVD purchases.
•There's no end in sight. Over the next four years, Merrill Lynch predicts 30% annual growth for the genre. Consumer spending on TV DVD products will reach $3.9 billion in 2008, Wall Street analyst Jessica Reif Cohen says.
Driving the trend: profits. DVDs are fairly cheap to make, and studios already have paid for the production. By putting a TV series on DVD — often without any extras — studios can make $8-$30 for each season-long DVD set sold, Cohen says.
The first-season DVD of Comedy Central's Chappelle's Show is the best-selling individual TV DVD set, eclipsing the 2 million mark. Cohen estimates that Paramount breaks even after selling just 13,000. If subsequent seasons each sell about 3 million, Chappelle's DVDs could eventually generate $54 million for the studio.
Fox could take in $235 million for all 15 seasons of the top-selling DVDs of The Simpsons, she says.
The popularity of TV on DVD doesn't surprise Gord Lacey, creator of TVShowsonDVD.com. Viewers connect to TV shows differently from how they connect with movies, because they spend more time with the characters each week, he says. Even flop TV shows have fans.
"It's amazing how there are lesser-known shows that achieve this cult following," Lacey says. DVDs represent "a way the shows can live on."
TV shows rerun profitably on DVD
By Mike Snider, USA TODAY
That the Seinfeld gang of Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine would end up on DVD was only a matter of time, but Raj, Dwayne and Rerun?
The 28-year-old urban comedy that aired for three seasons on ABC, What's Happening!! wouldn't seem to be a title on the must-list to be turned into a series of DVDs. (Related story: Old TV shows never die...)
But Columbia TriStar knew that there were thousands of fans of the series who were interested in having it on DVD, based on responses to a poll taken on the Sony Pictures home video Web site.
"We had released Sanford and Son and The Jeffersons to pretty good success," says Benjamin Feingold, president of Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment. "I thought it was the next thing in our library that needed to come out."
Since its release in February, What's Happening!! — The Complete First Season DVD has sold about 100,000 copies — not as much as Sanford and Son or the millions that Seinfeld is expected to sell when it is released Nov. 23. But it was profitable enough that two weeks ago, the studio released the What's Happening!! second-season DVD set (three discs, $30).
"Television on DVD is probably the fastest-growing segment of the industry," says Ken Graffeo of Universal Studios Home Video. "There are a lot more releases, and retail is putting more emphasis on them."
Retailers from Best Buy to Wal-Mart are increasing the amount of shelf space dedicated to TV DVD product.
Several factors explain the expanding wave of TV DVDs:
•Fans are demanding titles, even of cult hits. Since the onset of DVD, studios have been besieged by die-hard fans who want to add collections of shows like the sci-fi series Sliders and Tales of the Unexpected and the satirical cop comedy Sledge Hammer! to their DVD stashes. "A lot of it has been requests coming from consumers," Graffeo says of the Sliders release. "What we have done is really line up what we have fielded out to be the most popular shows consumers have asked for."
•DVDs can help sell TV shows and movies. For the release of the '70s series Starsky & Hutch, Warner Home Video released the first season on DVD the same week in March that the feature film starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson opened. The TV series' second-season DVD coincided with the movie's DVD release.
"We don't know how many fans there were wanting Starsky & Hutch (the TV series on DVD), but all of a sudden you do a movie and millions of people see it and some say, 'That movie is great, I'll go get the DVD (of the series),' " says Don Rosenberg, publisher of Video Store Magazine.
Meanwhile, Universal released American Dreams — Season One Extended Edition on Sept. 7 just before the new season began "because that is when momentum is there," Graffeo says.
Fox is hoping to boost the audience for its Emmy-winning series Arrested Development by releasing a collection of the first season's episodes on Tuesday (three discs, $40) The new season premieres Nov. 7.
The approach has worked for Fox before. In September 2002, two weeks before the second-season premiere of 24, Fox released the first season on DVD. "When the show launched, its second-season ratings were up," Fox's Steven Feldstein says.
•There's a reason they call it classic TV. Beloved series such as Sanford and Son, Laverne & Shirley and Happy Days hold up well against today's programming.
And a time-tested TV series already has "a core audience," Feingold says. "In the case of Sanford and Son, it's a piece of cultural history. These days, there's a shortage of African-American programming in general."
Even obscure series are finding an audience on DVD. Take the '90s late-night comedy series Mr. Show.
The show's co-hosts, David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, were met with fans begging for the show on DVD while on a promotional tour for the book Mr. Show: What Happened?, written by Odenkirk's wife, Naomi.
"There is a fanatical Mr. Show fan base, and if we get the product in the right place and market it in the right way, they will buy it," says Cynthia Rhea, senior vice president of marketing for HBO Video.
But Rhea worries that TV DVDs might become "too much of a good thing. I fear there will be some process of natural selection."
As TV DVDs have proven successful, the inevitable hurdles have arisen. The arrival of Seinfeld on DVD —Seinfeld Seasons 1 & 2 and Season 3 (four discs each, $50) in stores Nov. 23 — was complicated when co-stars demanded compensation for their work on DVD extras. Finally, the stars were cut in on a portion of DVD sales.
While studios deal with inevitable complications, creators of current series are looking to the future. American Dreams executive producer Jonathan Prince re-edited the shows for DVD to include entire musical performances of acts such as Usher. Now in stores, the $90 DVD has extras that include original clips from Dick Clark's American Bandstand. "You actually have hard-core black-and-white footage that hasn't been seen," Prince says.
TV producers have to start considering both markets, Prince says. "We have to start shooting shows differently because DVDs will be an important part of the market."
• Contributing: Thomas K. Arnold