Arg! I May be a Pirate, But You’re a Dinosaur

Late last spring I was breaking bread with a friend of mine who used to be in charge of digital advertising for a major motion picture studio. Catching up with one another we chatted about recent reads, jobs, music, and movies in our lives. I offhandedly mentioned that this was the first year since having kids 10 years ago that I had seen every Oscar nominated movie even though I hadn’t step foot in a movie theater in over a year. She looked up from her salad and ask how I managed to pull that off as most the movies weren’t in home release yet. It was easy, the net was full of digital copies of stringers DVDs sent out to academy voters to ensure they saw the films before they voted for the winners. Annoyed, she asked me if I forgot where she used to work.

I told her that I would happily pay a premium to stream these movies because there was no time in my life to go to a theater. And I know that I’m not the only one either. There are millions of us under served movie fans. What the movie companies need to understand is that their century old distribution model is completely out of touch with how most people want to consume their media. Theatrical release of the vast majority of movies makes no sense anymore, in fact, it creates an environment for piracy.  In a blog post BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield argued that Hollywood is to blame for its customers seeking out content without paying for it.

In a world of IP-connected devices (smartphones, tablets and IP-enabled TVs) fueled by improving bandwidth wired/wirelessly and consumers that increasingly expect access to content anywhere/anytime (think WatchESPN or HBOGO), the movie industry’s sequential release pattern a.k.a. “windowing” appears to be the underlying problem fueling piracy. Hollywood’s distribution strategy needs to evolve to meet consumers needs. In a world driven by physical product (VHS/DVD), content was always available (except between theatrical and home video albeit there was no other way to get the movie), it never disappeared, whereas in a digital world, studios have created more discreet release windows that are impossible for consumers to understand.”

In protecting its increasingly untenable distribution system Hollywood is putting up barriers between its customers and the content that they want to watch. They actually think that legislation rather than innovation will solve their piracy problems. Did they really not learn the lesson of the music industry? Sure scrapping the old system and replacing it with digital will hurt some partners, but the consumers will benefit, and isn’t that an opportunity?

I’m the poster boy for this. I stream 10x the movies that I would ever pay to go see in a theater. If they made their product more available digitally I would gorge myself with not only Oscar worthily films, but also the more niche long tail titles too. The thousands of dollars I spend on iTunes proves that I am all to happy to pay for premium copyrighted entertainment, just make it convenient for me. And this doesn’t mean that I will never shell out $20 to go see a big tentpole movie again. Unfortunately, peer pressure will find me standing in line to buy tickets for the next Avatar.