Blockbuster: VoD industry pact would be welcomed, but not anticipated

Dallas (TX) - In an amendment to comments made for TG Daily’s story last Thursday, in which Blockbuster spokesperson Randy Hargrove told us that the video-on-demand market is unlikely to grow at the rate some service providers would like, Hargrove added late last Friday that an agreement between movie studios, carriers, and service providers with regard to a reasonable economy of scale that makes VoD profitable for all involved, might not be as unprecedented as first implied, and wouldn’t be out of the question. He reiterated that Blockbuster would be supportive of such an agreement...but it’s not expecting one.

Such an agreement, if it were to take place, might enable studios to generate higher revenues from the release of movies to the video-on-demand market, enabling them to move up the window of availability for such movies to at least closer to, if not in sync with, their DVD release dates. DVD releases now constitute, Hargrove noted, studios’ leading source of revenue from movies, with video-on-demand reaping only about one-fifth that amount, according to an industry study he cited. Other such studies are presently debating whether studios truly make more from DVDs than from the cinematic releases, but Hargrove and others are among the camp which believes they do.

Hargrove also wished to make certain his comments from last Thursday were not interpreted as his company dictating to the rest of the industry what they should or should not do. Rather, like the company’s online marketing program for high-def video discs, to premiere tomorrow, he said Blockbuster is vigorously pursuing the discovery of what it is that consumers believe they want in next-generation video, in order that the company can move forward in delivering the services and products these customers are choosing.