Physical vs. Digital and One More Thought

    Everyone that knows me knows that I am a working film critic and that I love movies. That's why I do what I do. Something was in the news yesterday. Apparently, Target department stores are going to stop selling CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays because they don't sell enough to be worth the trouble. They have to pay to stock what they have, and if those things aren't sold, the store drops prices to try and get rid of that supply, or they dispose of them, and eat the cost. It's not all Target stores that are going to do this, but it's enough to make other stores and people think about doing the same thing.

    I have a pretty large DVD/Blu-Ray collection. I love physical media. I also love retro media, like vinyl records for example, I like the feeling of being able to see, hold and experience my media. Now, I am lucky that with my critic job, I get a lot of the big streaming services for free, or a very discounted rate. I consume a ton of streaming films, TV shows and music. I do watch and listen to more streaming the media than I do using physical media, but I am afraid for physical media to go away. I don't think it ever should, but there is also a flip-side to that.

    Physical media requires physical parts. Discs have to be made, machines that create physical media need to be maintained. That costs studios and the hardware manufacturing companies have to spend is quite a bit of money, and if the physical media isn't selling enough of the media due to streaming, at what point do they give up and go to streaming only? 

    Also, on the digital side, studios give their movies to certain streaming services, and those services have to pay the studios to stream their content. For example, there is a movie on Netflix that I love that is an older made for TV movie. I believe the original broadcast was on NBC. Netflix has to pay NBC for that made for TV movie I love. Netflix has pay Paramount Studios to have the incredibly awesome Avatar: The Last Airbender in order to stream that content. If the streaming service is making money by streaming that content for you, then everything is fine, but movies and tv shows that have very low streaming views, then Netflix is paying to keep a show that nobody is really watching, and so they get rid of it.

    Here's the other part to it. I consider myself a cinephile, meaning I love movies and I watch a lot of them and I study them. I love film history, and I love a lot of silent films and black and white films, and I think it's a shame that our kids aren't forced to take film history classes for art credits in junior high and high schools. I know film studies films exist in high school, but not film appreciation. I have the hardest time trying to get my 13 year old son to watch anything that is black and white, or a silent film. 

    There is also pop-culture that comes into this as well. It kind of goes hand in hand with kids not watching old movies. Warner Bros. has a part of the studio where there is a film historian, which I would love to be, but he puts together awesome collections of Warner Bros. and MGM films, and you can buy physical versions or digital versions, but they don't make nearly as much money as they really should because they really are great. I feel that every 20 years, our pop-culture in film, music, books, comics, really any art form will change. Off the top of your head, think of movies you saw 20 years ago in the theater, or even just bought a DVD of a movie from 20 years ago. I bet if you searched movies from 20 years ago, you would know you watched them, but you can't remember the experience, which begs the question, do we really care and appreciate everything we saw 20 years ago. I know I don't.

    Back again, lets say our kids refuse to watch black and white or silent films, in 20 years when they are adults, is the appreciation going to be so low for those old films, that they are removed entirely from any form of exhibition? Will they be streaming somewhere, or have a physical version to easily access. I'm going to admit to a crime I committed back in 2003. I love the Charlie Chaplin film City Lights. It's so funny, but it's a silent film. I found a DVD of it at the public library, but I never returned it, but I paid a fee for "losing it" because I couldn't find a copy to purchase. I will say that they did re-release a DVD for it, but not for another ten years after I took it, and it is currently unavailable to purchase.

    What will happen to all of these great movies and tv shows from history when they are no longer appreciated by anyone, especially if we are unable to help people see the importance of old media. I think maybe something like the Internet Digital Archives would be fantastic, but there would need to be people to run it, and they would need to be paid to do it, and it would need to be maintained and give it a nice interface, unlike the Internet Digital Archives which is awesome, but looks kind of like it was crated in the dawn home internet access and hasn't changed its format since the mid-1990s. 

    I also found out a couple of years ago that when you open Netflix, the movies and shows you see to watch are only half of as percent of the content that they actually have, and there is a ton more to Netflix than people thing because we open it up and get the trending or new content. There are websites out there that will give you lists of everything they have. I think if studios would give up royalties for some of their older movies or tv shows, then the streaming services wouldn't have to worry about losing money just to make something available, despite how many times it is watched, but money is a huge factor, and I don't think that will happen anytime soon, I just think it would work if we could leave the money out of it, depending on a certain criteria for film and tv, and make things available to be consumed.

    What are your thoughts? Do you stream all of your media, or do you prefer physical media? I think streaming opens up the door to have access to so much. I was talking with my friend the other day about how I was collecting the DVD sets for The Simpsons season sets, but they stopped making them after season 17, but now I have access to every single Simpsons episode on Disney +. I love that it's right there, but I also loved the artwork and packaging that those sets came in. I love my Simpsons Movie Blu-ray disc that looks like a pink frosted donut with sprinkles. I love my vinyl record collection very much, and I love the way the small static noise that goes along with playing them. 

    I'm not saying that streaming is bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I think that our choices for physical copies of things we love shouldn't go away because they are special and important too, and how they add an extra bit of nostalgia to our hearts and minds. I love special features on DVDs and Blu-rays for movies and tv shows, and you don't get most of that stuff when you just stream the movie. I know there are some streaming services that do have special features too, but it's a lot less than DVDs and Blu-rays. 

 

    Well, that's my thought for tonight. I hope you are all well and that you are having a good day. I have a critic screening tomorrow evening for a movie that I have been really excited to see all year, The Creator, and I will probably be posting another link for my podcast review in about 24 hours from now. I will be back again with another post soon.