Trade magazine
Home Media Retailing (formerly
Video Store Magazine) has posted
an article about the American International Toy Fair that was held earlier this week in New York City. The story, written by Anne Sherber, discusses how toys and DVDs are now rather co-dependent on each other, and releases of one are often tied into another. One example given brings good news for
American Idol fans: it turns out that a new
Idol-themed series of Barbie toys will find synergy with a new round of DVDs featuring the first three seasons of the show. Here's a quote from Gerber's report:
David Luner, VP, licensing of Freemantle Media, the license holder of TV series "American Idol," enjoying its fourth season as an entertainment juggernaut, is launching its licensing program with "American Idol Barbie." ...Luner also notes that the company is in negotiations with a video company to release the first three seasons of the program on DVD. Although he said the companies are close to an agreement, he declined to name the potential partner. Ventura Distribution released the first season on video.
Note that the original DVD release, while distributed by Ventura as noted in the story, was actually produced by Respond2 Entertainment. It was a best-of disc, showing the highlights of the first season as contestants are eliminated on the road to deciding a winner. The move away from a full-season release was due to the nature of the show: 1) it would be costly to license every song that the Idols sung for DVD release, and 2) it was thought that fans wouldn't be interested in re-living every moment of the show, but just seeing the most important parts of the contest.
That release was available in a
1-DVD version with the best parts of the 2002 competition, and also a more limited
2-DVD version which also included the "Making of an American Idol" extras disc.
Would new releases continue with the Best-Of format, or - like
Survivor, another hot reality show - jump from best-ofs to full season sets? We don't know, and we suspect even Freemantle doesn't know until they conclude the process of partnering with a North American distributor, and work out the details with them. Who will that distributor be? We honestly don't know, but we will point out that Freemantle has an existing relationship with A&E for the Thames library of U.K. properties, so it might be a good guess that they're the front runners. On the other hand, we *are* just guessing. Stay tuned, and we'll let you know for sure when we do.
