The mystery of declining DVD sales

TEXT OF STORY

Scott Jagow: DVD sales have been kind of sluggish lately. Hollywood and the music industry aren’t panicking just yet, but there’s some concern. Steve Tripoli looked into it.

Steve Tripoli: Peter Kafka at the Silicon Alley Insider website says industry folks have been anticipating a DVD sales drop.

Peter Kafka: The problem for Hollywood is they were expecting by this time that they would have a new format that would spur new DVD sales.

That didn’t happen in part because a war of competing DVD formats has consumers confused.

But Tom Adams at Adams Media Research says DVD sales still aren’t tanking.

Tom Adams: It’s not that the business is declining. It’s that the growth rates have gone away, and it’s now a flat business.

That’s got analysts like Kafka saying the industry’s facing a fight to hold onto precious retail shelf space.

But Adams doesn’t see a squeeze. He says the industry’s midweek release of new DVDs has become an important part of entertainment retailing.

Adams: It drives traffic and creates really their third weekend day, something they never had before.

So the industry’s worried about online delivery and other challenges, but there’s still time to prepare for a post-DVD world.

I’m Steve Tripoli for Marketplace.