The Writers Strike is over, now what?
Posted Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 4:48 PM Central
by John Couture
A collective sigh of relief swept through the entertainment industry last week when the writers ratified the new deal and got back to work. But, now that the dust has settled and the studios and TV networks have had time to adjust, what does that mean for you, the DVD consumer?
To be fair, there are really two main DVD categories to consider, TV on DVD and feature-length movies. The only affect that the writers strike will have on feature-length movies is a small adjustment in the windows of a few releases. Once a shooting script is set, there is usually little to no changes during a film's production.
Of course, each film is different. Comedies, for example, tend to have more re-writes on the fly during filming than say historical epics. It's not like you can rewrite the outcome of the Civil War, or can you?
The TV side is really where you are bound to see the most radical DVD impact. First, there are DVD offerings, such as 24: Season 7 that will simply be pushed back a year because the TV airing of those episodes have been pushed back.
For shows that aired episodes this season, the DVD strategy might be different depending if they are planning on airing more episodes this season. Take Lost which is planning to air an additional 5 episodes to the 8 that have already been slated for TV time. It's quite possible that Disney will release all 13 episodes as a season 4 set, but that number is far less than the 24 episodes it released last year or the 16 episodes it was supposed to air this season.
The logical assumption is to conclude that fewer episodes would mean a cheaper price point. And yes, while 13 episodes and bonus features will probably fit on say 4 DVDs as opposed to last season's 7, there are more factors that feed into pricing than simply the number of discs in the box.
Shows that have huge music license fees such as Smallville or Gossip Girl will have to recoup those license fees regardless of how many shows are in the package. So, you probably won't see much movement on their price points.
Finally, shows that are coming back, but have been shelved until next season such as Dirty Sexy Money may decide that it doesn't make much sense to release the nine episodes that aired in season one by themselves and may opt to release them with the complete season 2 package, at a higher price point of course.
The bottom line is that studios realize that the TV on DVD business is time sensitive and key not only to their bottom line, but the future success of the show on TV, which ultimately means better DVD sales of the show the following year.
I think you will see an interesting strategy employed by the studios come Fall. I think some of them will move the price point down to capitalize on the perception of lower costs while others will leave them right where they are and just assume that fans of the show will pay the price they set.
Whatever the case may be, you can be sure that there will be plenty of new and interesting angles taken in the TV on DVD business this Fall.
Of course, no matter what Fox does, they can't pull a 24 out of their hat. Or can they?