Time Warner Loves Day and Date VoD
A tidbit from Time Warner’s earnings call. Warner Bros. et al are very pleased with VoD day and date trials. That is, releasing a movie to VoD at the same time it’s released to DVD. (DVD used to have the earlier release window.) So much so it’s planning to release “essentially all” its titles that way this year.
Time Warner maintains that DVD sell-through is not affected — it even claims sell-through is up a bit because there’s less competition with used rentals. VoD margins for the studio are in the 60-70% range, while DVD rental margins are 20-30%, it says. So, Blockbuster and Netflix are the only victims.