Movie Moguls Scared To Ride Digital Train

[GhostShip]

An interesting commentary on movie studios and there reluctance to enter in a big way the digital market place.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2005/nf20051018_5868_db011.htm

True, Hollywood does have an online-distribution operation. But fewer than 100,000 people a month log on for flicks from Movielink, which is owned by five studios, or from CinemaNow, whose owners include independent studio Lions Gate and Microsoft (MSFT ). The folks at Movielink and CinemaNow have tried valiantly to make their sites user-friendly. They've both put in hot new technology to cut movie downloading time from hours to minutes, and both charge roughly what it takes to rent a DVD from Blockbuster.

The problem is, there just aren't enough flicks on the sites. And those that are there aren't too new, either. That's because of the Hollywood's increasingly outdated "windows" business model, in which studios first sell their flicks to theaters, then release them on DVD, and finally license them for TV. Movies are currently available for download somewhere between DVD and TV, so if you want to snag an online copy of, say, Warner Bros.' Batman Begins, you can't. It won't show up on MovieLink or CinemaNow until two months after its Oct. 18 release to Blockbuster and Wal-Mart .

Lets face it, the industry are scared of taking any major step towards decent online systems, the mere idea of anyone being able to maybe watch a movie without paying eveytime, offends them very much it seems.

[GhostShip]

This is the the stark reality for many of the studios customers.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051025/media_nm/industry_dc_1

Year-to-date sales at the North American box office are down about six percent from last year, while the number of tickets sold is off by about nine percent. Observers have offered plenty of reasons -- such aspoor quality, rival forms of entertainment and difficult year-ago comparisons.

Paul Hanneman, executive vp sales and strategic planning at 20th Century Fox International, kick-started the convention's opening session by suggesting moviegoers may have felt burned by "overhyping" one too many times and, because of aggressive marketing, "may feel they've seen a film before it opens."

He added: "We have to be honest with ourselves: Are we making the best films we can? Have profit projections led to quests for tentpoles at the expense of quality?"

They will always try to blame anyone but themselves, they even mislead the cinema operators.
The Cartel know they are making more from Dvd sales, this is just a cynical way to place the "blame" and wrong foot the industry that they no longer need, just the same as they are doing to the music stores.