Adding and subtracting value

Cinema attendances are down in South Africa (as they are in the US), but retail DVD has taken off in the most extraordinary manner. Whether or not these two things are connected, retail DVD in South Africa is now worth about R800-million per year, with an estimated further R100-million being spent on pirated products. And that excludes games for PlayStation or XBox and the like — we’re just talking about buying movies, TV series and so on, on DVD, to watch at home. Moreover, this market is growing at a rate of about 25% per year.

What’s even more extraordinary is that this has happened on a promotional budget of zero. The movie distributors spend large amounts of money on advertising and other promotional activities to get people into cinemas, yet ticket sales keep dropping. No money has been spent on getting people to buy DVDs: the amazing growth in this market has taken place without the deployment of any advertising budget whatsoever.

This phenomenon is something I will explore further in this blog; I will be getting comment from industry players. In the meantime, it’s worth noting that we’re spending all this money on DVDs, despite not being treated with quite the degree of care we might like. When I spoke to Ster-Kinekor’s DVD chief, Muzi Siyaya, about this, he admitted that DVD-buyers in South Africa aren’t necessarily getting as good a package as they could. The South African versions of most DVDs omit the extras that overseas versions contain.

A current example would be the DVD release of Shortbus, which in the way of extras has only deleted scenes. There is no director interview, no making-of featurette, no “How to shoot sex: a docu-primer”, no director or cast commentary.

All these features are available on a single disc on the US release , so why can’t we get them in South Africa? Is this really saving the distributor so much money? Surely the kind of person who buys a DVD to keep and re-watch is the kind of person who relishes the extra features. I know I do; they are what add value to something one has already seen at the cinema. Why do the South African distributors subtract this value?