Alan Smithee

Was just reminded of this after seeing a few being sold on Ebay, and I have a couple of these my parents brought back from a trip to England- Some newspapers over there, and in some other countries (saw a few on Ebay saying they were from Peru) have been including DVDs, most of them full-length movies. Exactly why, I don't know, but I'd certainly buy a newspaper here more often if it came with a disc! With newspaper sales being down in the US, why hasn't anyone tried doing this?

And on another note, why has it been so damn hard to keep a magazine-format DVD going? Discs every month or so with movie trailers and stuff seems to be a no-brainer, but this has been tried a few times and failed- like Total Movie, InsideDVD, and Leonard Maltin's DVD Preview which lasted only one issue.

Lastdaysofrain

I know at least in the UK when I lived there there was a huge amount of competition between all the papers and there were just in general a lot more papers. Most major cities have what, two papers at most here? In the UK there were at least six daily papers, and more if you added in weekly and special editions. The other thing is that a lot of those DVD releases were awful, full frame, bad prints, etc.

We at least got DVDs with General Mills Cereal boxes for a while, that wasn't too bad.

Wezzo

In the UK there are actually about twelve widely-distributed papers, and getting an edge on the competition certainly plays/played a role in the "free DVD" gimmick. I don't know if they happen as much anymore, though.. (maybe I just don't look for them as much though)

mdnitoil

In the age of high speed internet, the DVD magazine concept, as with just about any magazine concept, is dead in the water.

Lastdaysofrain

I still enjoy magazines, but I really enjoy the ones that have indepth retrospective articles, as opposed to relying on them for the latest news like I used to.

milo bloom

Even accepting that print is dead, it still seems like a missed opportunity that we don't see more pack-in DVDs like the old cereal box ones on various items. The replication costs have got to be dirt cheap by now for the discs, so it's seem like it would be an easy way to increase the perceived value of something to add a DVD to it.

Lastdaysofrain

I think you'd be more likely to see a digital download code, or even a code to view something streaming than you would a DVD

milo bloom

I don't think it's there yet. Just looking at a hobbyist forum like this, it doesn't have a lot of acceptance. I can see a physical copy of something catching the eye of shopper more than the offer of a code.


That said, it would be one way to increase the consumer base for downloads, putting DL codes some really big name movie or even TV show on a product.