If you subscribe to the ideology of one Phil Gramm, you might well believe that there IS no recession going on, and that people are just whining about things.  Of course, you might well be backpedaling when confronted on it, but still.  Home Video Magazine is giving us the rundown–apparently, while sales of pretty much everything fell in the first six months of this year, sales (including rentals) of home video materials and DVDs and such are actually up from this same time last year.

The results come in the face of new reports that downloading of movies on such sites as Apple’s iTunes store, MovieLink and Cinema Now is rising significantly. But Tom Adams, president of Adams Media Research, told the magazine, “The fact is, despite what many on Wall Street seem to think, there is very little digital downloading going on. We’re talking about $118 million in 2007 spending, and about $254 million this year — so against a $24 billion packaged media market it’s really not making much of a dent at this point.”

This would frankly amaze me if I hadn’t been saying it all along.  The word is simple: People are discovering the incredible value of popping their own popcorn, buying soda in the twenty-four big can pack, and sitting down on their own couch to watch movies in the comfort of their own homes rather than blowing comparative fortunes on gas to drive to the theatre and all the attendant problems.

It’s getting to the point where the theatres only have one advantage left–release times.  And if the studios ever start slimming the distribution window it’ll spell the end for the system as a whole.  Should that happen, about the only thing left to save the theatre will be the indie movie system, otherwise known as “getting stuff no one else has”.

Tags: recreation, life, hobbies

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Categories: Movie stories //