TV Killed the iTunes Movie Catalog
Earlier this week, Macworld cried foul over some movies that appeared to be disappearing from the iTunes Store. There was no apparent pattern as the movies were all released by different studios. I checked a few of them in the Canadian Store, and they were still there...
So what was up?
CNet did some investigating, and it turns out we -- once again -- have big media to thank for our poor user experience:
Normally, release windows don't affect retailers or video-rental services after they've begun selling or renting films. Warner Bros. doesn't go into Best Buy and pull DVDs off the shelf when Comcast airs Casablanca. The corner Mom and Pop video store doesn't surrender copies of Gladiator to Universal Studios when the film appears on ABC. But Internet stores are being treated differently. What this means for iTunes and Netflix customers is that movies will pop in and out of the services.
CNet notes that DVDs, of course, aren't yanked off the shelves when TV wants to air a movie, so why are online stores like iTunes treated differently?
The answer, of course, is because broadcasters say they are.
Is that reasonable? Is the internet different than the brick-and-mortar? Should movies be yanked down from iTunes but still be for sale on a DVD at Walmart? Or have we evolved past those differences, and content should be available for us to buy when and how we want to buy it?
Editor-in-Chief of iMore, Executive Producer at Mobile Nations, co-host of Iterate and ZEN and TECH, cook, grappler, photon wrangler.
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That's ridiculous!! There is nothing different the DVD is eventually going to be a thing of the past!! For them to say "cause they are" just seems like an answer they used cause they themselves know how dumb that is.
Why wouldn't the movie makers, or people profiting from the iTunes items want to receive money for the service instead of for free? Will the end of DRM change any of this?
That's crazy! people want things when they want it and how they want it. Once someone steps in takes control over that its a huge turn off.
How many holes can big media put in their foot? And how many bullets does that gun hold?
I would suspect that there are multiple things at play. 1) they might have engaged in some sort of exclusivity agreements with broadcast/cable, some of which may have predated agreements with on-line marketing channels; and 2) the studios may have some revenue management software spitting out numbers that show that the incremental gain from on-line sales is very little than the amount that they can get from broadcast/cable. So they're going to do what it takes to maximize revenue even if it means that they upset a few people. Some businesses do this all the time.
Either way, it helps me to understand why I was able to buy the Dark Knight the other day but Batman Begins was not to be found on the iTunes store.
Amazon's Video on Demand service does this too. If you delete something you've previously bought you can normally re-download it anytime, but some movies have a pay-tv blackout window during which you can't re-download. This is presumably to protect the revenues that the studios get for exclusive premiers on premium channels like HBO and Cinemax.
Considering that most TV/film content available via iTunes is more expensive than the equivalent content on a DVD I don't know why anyone would bother. Perhaps if you are really desperate to see a particular film or show and couldn't be bothered to go to a store to buy the DVD and can't wait for the torrent to download?
I love your blog and will keep on subscribing