DVD Rental Revenue Falls, Delivering Another Blow to Home Entertainment Business

By Ben Fritz, The Los Angeles Times
April 15, 2010 | 12:51 pm D

VD rentals have gone from silver lining for Hollywood's struggling home entertainment business to yet another rain cloud.

The Digital Entertainment Group, a trade organization for the major movie studios, released its first-quarter data Thursday with the surprising news that U.S. DVD rental revenue fell 14% from a year ago. DVD sales account for about half the profits for a movie, so any decline portends financial worries.

During a very tough 2009 for home entertainment, consumers preferred to rent DVDs than purchase them. DVD rental revenue rose 4% in 2009, while sales dropped 13%. Both figures include high-definition Blu-ray discs.

The DEG did not provide the total amount of rental revenue for the first three months of 2009.

The group attributed the fall in rental revenue to the closure of physical stores as Blockbuster Inc. and Movie Gallery Inc. shut down locations rapidly. Both companies were struggling in 2009, however, when DVD mail subscription service Netflix and kiosk company Redbox accounted for nearly all of the rise in rentals.

The drop in rental revenue last quarter indicates that the two companies' rapid growth in 2009 may be slowing.

DVD and Blu-ray sales revenue, meanwhile, declined 11%, to a little more than $2.5 billion, dashing the hopes of many studios that comparisons with last year, when the recession was in full force, would cause the trend of falling sales to lessen or reverse.

The one major hit that launched on DVD in the first three months of the year was "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," which sold 4 million units the weekend it debuted.

In its release, the DEG noted that the comparison with the first quarter of 2010 was difficult because Circuit City was selling a large number of discs at a low price as part of its liquidation. Overall DVD and Blu-ray sales revenue was off 9% in the first quarter of last year despite that factor, however.

Blu-ray and digital remain bright spots. Sales of the high-definition discs were up 74%, and rentals were up 36%. Digital distribution revenue, which included download-to-own and video-on-demand rentals, grew by 27%, to $617 million.

Neither were nearly enough to make up for the drops in sales and rental, however. Overall consumer home entertainment spending dropped by 8%, to $4.8 billion. If that number doesn't improve over the next nine months, Hollywood could be looking at an even tougher year for home entertainment than 2009, when total revenue fell 5%.

"We are still facing a challenging environment but are very pleased to see positive indicators of stabilization in our overall business," Warner Home Video president Ron Sanders, who heads the DEG, said in a statement.

Raabe, 'Wizard of Oz' Munchkin Actor, Dies at 94

By Polly Anderson, The Associated Press
Saturday, April 10, 2010

Meinhardt Raabe, who played the Munchkin coroner in "The Wizard of Oz" and proclaimed in the movie that the Wicked Witch of the East was "really most sincerely dead," has died. He was 94.

His caregiver, Cindy Bosnyak, said Raabe — pronounced RAH'-bee — died Friday morning at a hospital in Orange Park, Fla. He was one of the few surviving Munchkins from the 1939 film.

Bosnyak said he complained of a sore throat at his retirement community before collapsing and going into cardiac arrest. He was taken to Orange Park Medical Center, where he later died, she said.

"He had a headful of hair at 94 and he ... remembered everything everyday," she said. "To me he was a walking history book, very alert."

Raabe was one of the 124 Munchkins in the film classic and one of only nine who had speaking parts. He was 22 years old and a show business veteran, earning money for college as a "midget" performer, as they were called then, when the movie was shot in 1938.

Raabe portrayed the diminutive Munchkin official who solemnly pronounces the witch dead after Dorothy's farmhouse lands on her: "As coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her, And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead."

His costume included a huge hat with a rolled brim, and dyed yak hair was used for his handlebar mustache and long beard.

In a 1988 Associated Press interview, he said he had no idea the movie would become a classic, because at the time of its release, it was overshadowed by "Gone With the Wind."

"It was only after CBS got the film in 1956 and used it for their promotions that it became as well known," he said.

"There is nothing in the picture that dates it," he said. "There are no old vintage cars or old vintage streetcars. ... It's a fantasy picture that will be fantasy for generations to come."

Raabe was about 3 1/2 feet tall when the movie was made. He eventually grew to about 4 1/2 feet. He toured the country for 30 years in the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, promoting hot dogs as "Little Oscar, the World's Smallest Chef."

He also enjoyed going to Oz nostalgia events and getting fan mail.

"It's an ego trip," he said. "This is our reward, the nostalgia."

In 2005, his book "Memories of a Munchkin: An Illustrated Walk Down the Yellow Brick Road," co-written by Daniel Kinske, was published. In later years, he lived in a retirement community in Penney Farms, Fla.

In 2007, Raabe was one of seven surviving Munchkins on hand when the Munchkins were honored in Los Angeles with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Raabe said he couldn't remember what he was paid for his role in the movie, but that it was very low.

"By today's standards, people would say you were crazy to work for that," he said.

Raabe, born in Watertown, Wis., in 1915, was a member of the Midget City cast at the Chicago World's Fair in 1934. He also performed at other fairs, including the San Diego Exposition in 1935.

"By working at these world's fairs as a midget, I was able to work my way through the university," Raabe said. He earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Wisconsin and, years later, a master's degree in business administration from Drexel University.

Raabe married Marie Hartline, who worked for a vaudeville show called Rose's Royal Midget Troupe, in 1946. She died in a car crash in 1997.

Raabe said some little people resented the word "midget," but that was the description widely used when he was in show business.

"My wife and I were both in show business, were both midgets. My wife worked from 1929 to 1932 as a member of Rose's Royal Midgets, the largest midget troupe in vaudeville," he said.

Raabe became a regular visitor to the annual OzFest in Chittenango, N.Y., the birthplace of "Oz" author L. Frank Baum, after reading about it in a magazine in the late 1980s.

"Meinhardt wrote us a letter and said, `You know I'm a Munchkin. I was in this movie. Would you ever be interested in having me come.' Of course, after we stopped screaming ...," organizer Barbara Evans said in 1998.

"Things didn't start to get really big until Meinhardt first came and we started getting the Munchkins to come," said Evans.

Week 11: Documentaries

MICHAEL MOORE
If you were to talk directly to the kids at Columbine
and the people in that community, what would you
say to them if they were here right now?

MARILYN MANSON
I wouldn’t say a single word to them,
I would listen to what they have to say.
And that’s what no one did.

Michael Moore and Marilyn Manson in
Bowling for Columbine (Moore, 2002 USA)

M 4.12/W 4.14
NO CLASS: WGHS Spring Break

UPCOMING:
M 4.19/W 4.21: Documentaries
In-class: “A Survey of Documentary Film, Pt. II”
Screening: Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His Father (Kuenne, 2008 USA)
Due: OSR 6 (Documentary Film)