Blockbuster CEO Is Still Confused By The Long Tail

from the have-you-taken-a-look-at-your-competitors? dept

In 2004, Chris Anderson wrote his feature article for Wired Magazine in which he coined the term "the long tail" to describe the business possibilities made possible by digital distribution. Four years and one best-selling book later, the CEO of Blockbuster is still confused by the concept that has been utilized by Netflix to wreak havoc on his business model. Yet, in a recent interview, the head of Blockbuster, Jim Reyes, misses the entire point of the long tail.

In response to a question regarding the small catalog of Movielink, Blockbuster's digital download service, Reyes responded, "When was the last time you watched 10,000 movies, you know? I don't care how many movies are available to me. As my personal taste as a customer, I want to watch the new stuff so whether we have 10,000 movies or 200 movies it doesn't matter if I don't want to see any of the movies that we have." The point of the long tail is not to ignore the hits, but to make available more. While Reyes's quixotic opinion may appease viewers with very limited tastes, when distribution and content creation is exceedingly cheap, it makes no sense to limit content. In his original article on the concept, Anderson noted that one-fifth of Netflix rentals are outside the top 3,000 movies. Clearly, a sizable minority of movie-watchers want to see films outside Movielink's inventory that "is heavily weighted toward newer releases and mainstream staple titles."

Kevin Donovan is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Kevin Donovan and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Surprising Survey Results Reveal That Movie Download Sites Do, In Fact, Suck

from the how-much-clearer-can-we-be? dept

It's incredibly obvious -- to everybody but the Hollywood movie studios, apparently -- just how bad movie-download sites are. When the first studio-backed efforts launched several years ago, the problems were clear. In the following five years, they haven't been fixed, despite plenty of reviews pointing them out. The studios made "protecting" their content with ridiculously restrictive DRM their top priority; delivering a good user experience came in somewhere down towards the bottom. Now, a new study has yet again pointed out that consumers don't like these services, and yet again makes it clear why: poor selection, unreasonable prices, poor quality. Add in the general difficulty in getting video from the services to users' TVs, and you've got a recipe for failure. These are many of the same points that have been made over the download services' lifetime, but that the studios and companies running the services have largely failed to address. It's little wonder, then, to see a site like Movielink, the studios' own download site, get sold at a huge loss since it's going to take wholesale changes to give it any chance of success.

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Blockbuster Takes Movielink Off Studios' Hands For A Pittance

from the on-the-cheap dept

Movielink, the movie download site started by major movie studios, has been up for sale for quite some time. The studios have had a hard time finding a buyer, though, because it's blindingly obvious (to everybody but the studios, apparently) just how badly the site sucks. The studios' desire to lock down the content with restrictive DRM, along with other flaws make the site wholly unattractive for users. It now looks like the studios have finally talked Blockbuster into buying Movielink at a fire-sale price -- less than $20 million, according to the WSJ, compared to the $100 million-plus the studios pumped into the site. Blockbuster may have picked up some download infrastructure on the cheap, but if it hopes to wring any sort of success out of Movielink, it's going to have to completely change the way the site works. But the studios wouldn't let that happen before, since controlling the content was their top priority; since they'll still be licensing the content to Blockbuster, it's unlikely that they'll let it remove any of the barriers to uptake they've put in place.

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