TFC Tidbit of the Day 12- Rights licensing is very tricky
Think before you put all your eggs in one basket. Broadcasters and home video distributors sometimes want competing rights. Sometimes distributors want all rights and yet won’t exploit them all. It’s prudent to analyze options and the possibility of breaking up rights and windows and explore available options with people who have experience with this and can help you. This is our mandate, to help. Consult with someone who is up-to-date with industry standards, guidelines and rights definitions but most of all, someone who is experienced with revenue models, windows and all the possibilities in negotiations. And no one should get exclusive rights without paying properly for them.
Did you know that The Film Collaborative has a social networking platform for filmmakers called The Film Collaborators? Visit the site to set up your free account.
Orly Ravid July 12th, 2010
Posted In: Digital Distribution, Distribution Platforms
Tags: broadcast, distributors, home video, independent film, rights, The Film Collaborative
TFC Tidbit of the Day 8-Success with VOD
Cable VOD likes films with a theatrical profile. VOD is very marquee (name) driven and genre driven. Its marketing effort is limited, hence the need to have films with a recognizable name in the marketplace or with recognizable “stars”. Regarding Day and Date, cable operators like to note that the film is in theatres while it’s on VOD. In the past, Comcast had asked for a 90 – 120 day window ahead of all digital distribution, but is now sometimes doing Day and Date releases. It depends on the film, the platform, the distributor, and the campaign.
Orly Ravid July 6th, 2010
Posted In: Comcast, Digital Distribution, Distribution Platforms, Marketing
Tags: Day and Date, TFC, The Film Collaborative, VOD
TFC Tidbit of the Day 7- Top 10 Revenue Generating MSO’s (multi system operators-Cable and Satellite, basically)
These figures are accurate as of Dec. 2009 (reference NACTA). Take these figures into consideration when negotiating with an aggregator who promises to get your film onto these platforms.
| Rank | MSO | BasicVideoSubscribers |
| 1 | Comcast Corporation | 23,559,000 |
| 2 | DirecTV | 18,560,000 |
| 3 | Dish Network Corporation | 14,100,000 |
| 4 | Time Warner Cable, Inc. | 12,859,000 |
| 5 | Cox Communications, Inc.1 | 5,195,000 |
| 6 | Charter Communications, Inc. | 4,824,000 |
| 7 | Cablevision Systems Corporation | 3,063,000 |
| 8 | Verizon Communications, Inc. | 2,861,000 |
| 9 | Bright House Networks LLC | 2,264,000 |
| 10 | AT&T, Inc. | 2,064,000 |
* DirecTV usually does not take films for VOD with grosses less than $10,000,000 in box office.
Orly Ravid July 5th, 2010
Posted In: Digital Distribution, Distribution Platforms
Tags: AT&T, Bright House, cable and satellite revenue, Cablevision, Charter, Comcast, Cox Communication, DirecTV, Dish Network, The Film Collaborative, Time Warner Cable, Top 10 revenue, Verizon
TFC Tidbit of the Day 6- Windows for digital content
Windows are a reference to release windows, the prescribed time gaps between which films are released in different media. Make windowing deliberate rather than confusing the customer with scattered pricing in different formats and releases.
The preferred release schedule should be: Cable & Satellite VOD; then Transactional; then Rental; then Ad-Supported platforms; then Mobile/Wireless. In the next tidbits, there will be examples of each of these platforms.
Orly Ravid July 5th, 2010
Posted In: Digital Distribution, Distribution Platforms
Tags: cable, Digital Distribution, independent film, release windows, satellite, The Film Collaborative, VOD
TFC Tidbit of the Day 5-Revenue from Digital Platforms
From a revenue-generating point of view, at present, those who deal in the space will tell you that iTunes is the #1 platform; Hulu is working well for some but not for all; and that Netflix’s “Watch Now” is starting to show promise but one’s film needs to be on DVD with them too and be somewhat in demand. Some platforms are subscription based, some are transactional, and some are ad-tagged revenue-based. And sometimes a hybrid of the two not is only a doable solution but actually an ideal one, especially for smaller special-interest films.
Much of this information can be found within our Digital Distribution Guide, available to our members. For this week, you can gain access to the full Guide by contributing $35 to our IndieGoGo campaign.
Orly Ravid July 1st, 2010
Posted In: Digital Distribution, Distribution Platforms, Hulu, iTunes, Netflix
Tags: digital distribution guide, DVD, Hulu, independent film, iTunes, Netflix, revenue, TFC, The Film Collaborative
TFC Tidbit of the Day 4- Considerations for choosing a platform
Some platforms can be accessed via Self Distribution (e.g. Youreeeka or Maxcast) while others can only be accessed via an aggregator (e.g. Netflix, and iTunes, which at the moment is by far the greatest revenue generating platform in the digital distribution space). Some aggregators are better than others and some distributors and aggregators take lower fees than others. Choosing the best platform/portal for your film must be done with care and must also take into account the type of film it is and its overall release plan.
Much of this information can be found within our Digital Distribution Guide, available to our members. For this week, you can gain access to the full Guide by contributing $35 to our IndieGoGo campaign.
Orly Ravid June 30th, 2010
Posted In: Digital Distribution, Distribution Platforms
Tags: Digital Distribution, digital distribution guide, independent film, indiegogo, iTunes, Maxcast, Netflix, self distribution, TFC, The Film Collaborative, Youreeeka
TFC Tidbit of the Day 3-Time and cost questions to ask yourself
One must analyze one’s investment of time and costs in doing delivery before committing to any distribution option. Can you do yourself what the platform is offering to do for you? How much time and cost will you take on to accomplish the task? Is it worth it to pay someone for their expertise and connections? Just because it is theoretically possible to handle the work yourself doesn’t mean that is the best option for you to choose.
Much of this information can be found within our Digital Distribution Guide, available to our members. For this week, you can gain access to the full Guide by contributing $35 to our IndieGoGo campaign.
Orly Ravid June 29th, 2010
Posted In: Digital Distribution, Distribution Platforms
Tags: digital distribution guide, film delivery, independent film, indiegogo, The Film Collaborative
TFC Tidbit of the Day 2-Evaluating a Platform
A good thing to find out is the extent to which any given platform or distributor licensing to platforms have marketing tools and/or commitments in place. Will doing a deal with them be like having your film in the basement of a crap dvd store in a strip mall in Iowa (no offense to Iowans), or, will it be like having it on the shelves facing out in a big chain with some advertising, or will it be somewhere in between? Not all distributors and aggregators market films well or even at all so choose carefully or have a back-up marketing plan.
Much of this information can be found within our Digital Distribution Guide, available to our members. For this week, you can gain access to the full Guide by contributing $35 to our IndieGoGo campaign.
Orly Ravid June 28th, 2010
Posted In: Digital Distribution, Distribution Platforms
Tags: Digital Distribution, digital distribution guide, digital platforms, independent film, indiegogo, TFC, The Film Collaborative
TFC Tidbit of the Day 1-Choosing a Digital Platform
In this tidbit series, we hope to give good insight into the world of digital distribution in a way that is helpful to the filmmaker.
Digital platforms should be treated like online visual media stores, not distributors. For this reason, one should be very mistrustful if a company asks for exclusive license rights. Even when dealing with aggregators, they should only have exclusive rights to get the film onto specific platforms and at most they can ask you to follow specific windows in handling other platforms (By way of comparison, such a request from a brick-and-mortar video store such as Blockbuster would be occasional at best, and then they would pay a lot for that and it would only be for a short window of time, such as six (6) months).
Much of this information can be found within our Digital Distribution Guide, available to our members. For this week, you can gain access to the full Guide by contributing $35 to our IndieGoGo campaign.
Orly Ravid June 27th, 2010
Posted In: Digital Distribution, Distribution Platforms
Tags: Digital Distribution, digital distribution guide, digital platforms, independent film, indiegogo, TFC, TFC tidbit of the day, The Film Collaborative