Wal-freakin-Mart

Yesterday I read this article from the NYTimes Magazine about how DVD sales impact the movie industry, and WalMart's name came up.

Over the past few years, a handful of big chains have assumed a near-cartel on retail DVD sales; last year, Best Buy, Target, Costco, Sam's Club, Circuit City and Blockbuster together sold about 42 percent of the discs in the United States. And then there's Wal-Mart. One axiom of the DVD business seems to be that no one discusses Wal-Mart's influence or its negotiating tactics. One Hollywood studio agreed to talk with me as long as we wouldn't broach the subject of Wal-Mart; two other studios stopped speaking with me altogether once the subject of retail relations came up. Wal-Mart itself, which has recently touted its willingness to talk to the press in an effort to repair its image, avoided phone contact and communicated through a series of e-mail messages, its spokesmen claiming that they would like to talk, but that my deadline prevented them from doing so. I offered to extend my deadline. My public-relations contact soon wrote to make it clear that cooperating with me about DVD's would be impossible.

Wal-Mart's huge market share and desire for privacy almost certainly go together. At the moment, according to Tom Adams, the Arkansas-based chain alone controls about 22 percent of the overall DVD market in the United States and up to 40 percent on any one hit title. "They have enormous power," Adams said. "They've got the locations, the traffic, the customers. Therefore, how a title does depends on them." Mike Dunn at Fox agreed in large part with this assessment. I asked him whether a film could succeed if it didn't hit big at Wal-Mart. "Not a big film, no," he said. Yet he does believe that a smaller title, for instance one done by Fox's Searchlight division (its most recent release was "I Huckabees"), could succeed through Amazon.

Today I went to Radmila's site and she has blogged about WalMart also. I think this is a sign I need to post my links about WalMart (and why not to shop there):

I guess my WalMart boycott will never come to an end. . . - April 04
The WalMart You Don't Know
and my favorite WalMart blog, Always Low Prices, Always: The Best and Worst about WalMart

Please don't shop there, okay? Thanks.

update: Last night's ep of Frontline was about WalMart. I recorded it b/c I had to watch the Amazing Race. If I can remember to, I'll post on it after I watch it.

Frontline: Is WalMart good for America?