Anticipation, its making me wait…morons
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Has it really been that long, have we really learned that little in the past 5 years or so that the movie industry once again has to show just how out of touch they are? I stand before you today, once again in utter disbelief at what is happening yet again. Now the world isn’t going to end, and in 100 years no one is going to care about this momentary blip of stupidity in the history of humanity. But its because this kind of short sighted attitude seems so pervasive even after time and time again it has shown to be a bad idea, both in financial terms but also in long term goodwill that it infuriates me.
Warner Bros has made a deal with Netflix to delay the release of new movies to the rental company by 28 days (I’m sure it has no bearing on the zombie Apocalypse) in an effort to increase DVD sales. In return they are going to provide a broader list of movies for Netflix to make available on its streaming service. For its part, Netflix had little choice, as the future of movie rental is streaming, and I can only imagine that getting as large a catalog available as possible is critical to their current business strategy. Warner Bros however is making the exact same kind of boneheaded decision that left the music industry scrambling for relevance a few short year ago. How can they believe that limiting the ways in which I can give them money for a product is a good idea?
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It appears they hope that huge droves of mindless zombies (oh wait, maybe there is a reason for the 28 days) will not be able to contain their desire for Die Hardest with prejudice, or Transformers III Megatron goes to Band Camp. So they will run huge expensive add campaigns but they try and get someone who pays $9-$18 per month to watch 4-5 movies to pay at least $16 to watch one??? Maybe my math is off, but if I consider it a value to pay $3 to rent a movie, just how do you intend on enticing me to pay FIVE TIMES that much? Now I know that the American public is an instant gratification type of crowd, and I’m very well aware that a few people will fall for these shenanigans. However, I can’t imagine this will help the bottom line for several reasons. Most people will just wait the 28 days, but a good number will have lost enthusiasm by the time it is available for rent and just never bother. More importantly though, is that many people who really want to watch the movie will balk at the idea of having to buy the DVD, see it as corporate greed, and rightly or wrongly, they will get the movie online, and any revenue that may have been gotten from the rental are gone…more importantly, you will indoctrinate people into just how easy it is to steal movies online.
Creating a demand, then artificially limiting the supply of reasonably priced product is a recipe for disaster when it comes to infinitely copyable products. Millions of people want to give the movie industry money to rent movies…how stupid do you have to be to say…no?
That and much more on this weeks Mike Thinks News
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