Moving Movie Windows

The movie industry has been in a perplexed state recently. In the US, moviegoing continues to decline and all over the world, DVD sales are in freefall.

So, ironically, the industry is going to have to look to its two least favourite media to make up the slack. Traditional TV and the internet are the areas of fastest growth, and research from Eurodata TV states:

"2010 was marked by the rise of feature films among the national top 10 ranking broadcasts around the world. From 2008 to 2010, the proportion of feature film had double (8% in 2008 vs 15% in 2010). US blockbusters and local productions are the main drivers of this renaissance: strong movie brands like "Pirates of the Caribbean" or "Harry Potter" and the hugely successful French comedy "Welcome to the sticks" attract the highest audiences.

The return of feature film to the forefront also relies on the development of DTT and new channels. Today, the non-historical channels have an increasingly important market share (a 44.9% market share in United Kingdom, 31.1% in France). If the latest blockbusters are still the preserve of traditional leaders, the growing channels offer allows classical movies to find a second youth. The romantic classic "Dirty Dancing" attracted the best ever audience of the French channel TMC with an 8.3% market share (vs 3.4% on the same time slot over the previous months).

Movies are still being consumed out of proportion to their availability, with comedy and thriller proving particularly popular on the main channels: in Spain, Feature Films offer stands for 11% while their consumption is close to 18%."