End Of The Backlist

James Surowiecki:

…the flattening out and eventual decline of DVD sales had to be completely anticipated. After all, every year there are fewer and fewer good films for the studios to release on DVD. I’m not making a point about the quality of Hollywood’s new movies. Rather, I’m talking about the fact that a huge chunk of DVD sales over the years has come from the studios’ film libraries. The introduction of the DVD was a great boon to the studios’ bottom lines because DVDs were significantly better than videotapes (much better picture, and much longer-lasting) and people were, as a result, far more interested in owning them (rather than simply renting them). And people were interested not just in buying new movies, but also in buying older ones. So the studios have been able to turn their libraries into billions of dollars in sales.

The problem, obviously, is that those libraries, while vast, are limited.