@ NATPE 2006: Portable Movies: Studios May Be More Receptive But iTunes Model Poses Problems

Bruce Eisen, president of online movie service CinemaNow, has been running the studio gantlet. Asked during a session on the future of TV if broadband television was making rights negotiations with the studios more of a challenge, Eisen replied to laughter: “It’s impossible to make anything dealing with the studios more difficult.” But, he added that he’s starting to see a shift in attitude after being told no repeatedly to requests for portability. In the admission-against-self-interest category, his wife wanted to load some movies on a portable media center but couldn’t get them at CinemaNow so she rented the DVDs and moved them to the portable. He told the exec the story. “The response this time was ‘we should talk about granting you the right to put it on a portable device’. … They are coming around in that.”

For Eisen, these are “really exciting” times for mobile but he thinks studios and networks may have “some unrealistic expectations as to the finances and how that might work.” To him and many others, Apple’s iTunes model is about selling hardware, not about making a profit from media. “Their service is used to subsidize the sale of iPods. With CinemaNow, Vongo, we have to have a realistic concept.

Eisen wasn’t talking specific numbers but he was referring to the 70-30 split Apple is believed to be giving Disney and the rest. That’s more than a standalone business or one without a reason for subsidy can afford to give and still come out ahead, which could make a lot of the modeling going on a little iffier than usual if people try to extrapolate it outside Apple or to use $1.99 as the standard without factoring a different split.

NATPE conference coverage is sponsored by Brightcove.

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