That's the title of a great, slightly tongue-in-cheek article in this morning's Daily Variety . . .
I'm old enough to remember a childhood without the "Vertical Helical Scan" devices (who knew what VHS really stood for?). It was a time when you either saw a show when the network or theater owner decided to run it, or you missed out. Period. TV shows ran, then were lost to the ether.
I grew up with a long list of movies and TV shows I longed to see, based on the enthusiastic next-day descriptions of friends at school.* Somehow, the shows you missed always sounded so much more appealing than the ones you saw, and classics like It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown were the only shows you could count on getting repeat viewings.
All that changed with VCR and VHS. New worlds, and new markets, opened up. Studying classic animation and film suddenly became accessible to most everyone. Who, 30 years ago, could have predicted how this technology would change our industry (to say nothing of our social lives)?
So as we move on to bigger and better technology, let's all say a silent prayer for the passing of this old friend.
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5 comments:
Kevin! You beat me to the punch! I thought this was a very funny article...and very apropos for an animation blog, since animation studios -- particularly Disney -- made jillions of dollars from the format.
"Lion King" -- as the article notes -- sold 30 million copies in VHS.
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" sold something around 26 million cassettes.
Then there was "Aladdin," "Beauty and the Beast," "Pocahontas," and all those Disney classics from "Pinocchio" to "101 Dalmations."
And the great thing for the studio is, now all its eager customers will buy the same film in digital format...then in high def...then in....
I remember when they first released Pinocchio to VHS and everyone was concerned about what would happen when all the Disney classic films had been released onto video and they wouldn't be able to reissue them into theaters every 7 years as they had in the past - not to mention a host of other concerns.
Jeffrey said that in time there'd be another format along and people would just throw these old cartridges away like 8-tracks.
A lot of us had a hard time buying that reasoning (especially with the $80 price tag), but it turns out he knew what he was talking about. In fact, I doubt he even realized how many times they'd be able to re-issue the same movie over and over with different extras and what not.
There's a reason that Jeffrey K. is a jillionaire...
Stealing other peoples' ideas?
Yes and No.
"A fool and his money are soon departed",but,
I asked a few friends if they had bought the latest Star Wars DVD yet (The original theatrical release), and most of them responded
that Lucas was rich enough!! So no one wants to be the fool...
In any case, the animation dvd's are so freaking overpriced as it is...
Rufus.
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