paramount - Medialoper

Warning: This DVD forces you to watch evil previews!! In our house, we watch an embarassing amount of TV on DVD. My guess is that we pretty much jumpstarted the entire market. Just me and Rox.

Me the second I realized that I didn’t have to keep my old VHS copies of the original broadcasts of The Simpsons (I started taping it from the very first show, since I figured out that something so awesome would never ever last, and once I got locked into it, I couldn’t really stop, could I?), and Rox, who has already purchased the entire runs of both Buffy and Angel. Twice.

We have a 5-disc carousel that is always full of various TV shows. For example, right now, we have:

Veronica Mars Season 2
Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 2
Arrested Development Season 1
Battlestar Galactica Season 2.5
Taxi Season 2

It’s this last one that is causing all of the consternation. Not because of the show, which is an all-timer (and we haven’t even got to Reverend Jim yet!), but because some marketing genius at Paramount has decided that they want steal my life, a few minutes at a time.

Two big stories raced through Hollywood yesterday (though one was less discussed than you’d think). First, Sony Pictures Entertainment paid $65 million for a social networking site called Grouper. Second, Paramount ended its deal with Cruise/Wagner Productions. Neither of these things will likely affect you as you go about your daily business, but they’re fascinating to people like me.

The Grouper thing? Well, Sony had a few choices there. They could have built something for a lot less. A lot less. The technology is cheap and the video sharing market is wide open. Do not believe the hype about YouTube ruling the world. There is plenty of room for competition. You need to recall that YouTube is only now approaching its first birthday.

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