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And you thought VHS was dead years ago
December 22, 2008
A shout out to
VB friend Ryan Kugler of DV&A, who was profiled on the
front page of the Los Angeles Times this morning.
While the major studios have considered VHS dead for the better part of 5 years, and not one major studio film has been released on the format since 2006, the
Times calls the time of death for the videocassette October, 2008.
That's when Kugler's DV&A, which evolved from a used tape broker serving rental stores to a major broker of overrun inventory bought directly from the studios and sold to the biggest retailers, shipped its last truckload of VHS. Any other tapes the wholesaler had left, said Kugler, were going to be given away, or going to the dump.
While Kugler's company today makes the bulk of its money ($20 mil. in annual revenues) selling discounted DVDs to everyone from Wal-Mart and Target to dollar stores and indie retailers, he's already managing for the next transition. DVD has three or four years, at best, Kugler predicts, before Blu-ray takes over packaged media. "The days of the DVD are numbered," he says. "And that is good news for me."
Posted by Marcy Magiera on December 22, 2008 | Comments (1)
