Beyond the call of duty

January 09, 2011
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Twas the week before Christmas and devotees of online shopping stared at their screens in disbelief at the words: “Suspended due to inclement weather – no deliveries until the New Year.” Their reaction will have rushed through their minds faster than they could Tweet: “How could this happen? Why did nobody tell me? Who is to blame?” Then the chilling realisation will have struck home, “There’s only one thing left to do: I’ll have to leave the house to go Christmas shopping!”

In order for DVD and Blu-ray Disc titles to be on sale in December, specialist compression and authoring studios must deliver the digital masters for replication several weeks beforehand. In years past, content owners could select from a wide range of service providers but major companies such as Sony DADC, Technicolor and Deluxe play an ever-greater role in the complex creation of digital media for the major studios.

The surviving British independents, including Eyeframe and Re:fine, vie with creative shops such as The Pavement and Meedja for the production of homegrown content. The days when it seemed that every other door in Soho housed a DVD authoring facility are long gone and capacity now matches demand more closely. Most suppliers were committed fully in the last quarter of 2010.

A member of the Eyeframe team said, “We were choc-a-bloc in the run up to Christmas in nearly every department. Post-production was up on the same period in 2009, and the facilities were bursting at the seams. Both the weather and the economy came together to affect retail sales at the end of the year but there wasn’t the usual let-up in production at the end of the month; far from it.”

There has been a surge of interest in BD-Live at Eyeframe and they expect to author a lot more of these enhanced Blu-ray titles in 2011.

Technicolor VP Sales and Marketing Europe Jonathan Beardsworth says, “Blu-ray continues to progress as expected,” and he expects steady growth for the format in 2011, with one or two surprises on the positive side. But he notes that consumers must be made more aware of the versatility of Blu-ray.

“CE companies have presented the Blu-ray player as an all-round device in 2010, with considerable success. It is not just a BD Player: it will play any disc you’ve got. People in the trade know this but they are a minority; consumers are still relatively unclear about Blu-ray features and benefits,” he says.

He points out that Blu-ray is not “new in store” any more: “People are not desperate to buy a player because the format has been around for a while. The thing that will lead them to Blu-ray is either feedback from a colleague or friend, or as an incentive bundled with a 3D flat-screen purchase.”

Technicolor has authored more than 20 of the initial Blu-ray 3D releases, many for Warner Home Video, although prior to Christmas most of these were only available in North America. Beardsworth is at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where he expects 3D to be last year’s news: “The money is on connected TV and tablets for this year. You have to make sure that you are getting behind the best possible production values and the best quality applications that you can in order to ensure that consumer experience is great. Those are the things that Technicolor believes will be of great value in 2011.”

The process of consolidation continued to advance in Q4 2010 with the acquisition by Deluxe Entertainment Services of the subtitling company ECI, which was one of the first in the field to subtitle DVDs when the format arrived in the UK. In November, Deluxe announced the takeover of Ascent Media creative services and brought the UK post houses Rushes, Ascent 142 and Soho Film Lab under its wing.

Deluxe paid just £9 million for the UK assets of Ascent, which were valued at £53 million in the 2009 accounts. It was a bargain price for a deal that sets the company head-to-head with Technicolor at the top end of the digital media post-production market.

The Deluxe acquisition closed at the end of December at a time when there was snow throughout the British Isles and newspapers forecast retail meltdown. Far from wringing their hands, distributors and carriers worked miracles to replenish shelves. At the Sony DADC UK distribution centre in Enfield, General Manager Darren Houghton learned that parcels that arrived in the hardest-hit depots backed up in the hub with nowhere to go.

He immediately investigated alternative distribution solutions to ensure continuity of supply for clients, shipped trailers directly into Scotland and organised local vans to deliver the product to stores. “This was obviously more expensive, but we had to satisfy our clients' and customers' requirements at this critical time of the year for the entertainment industry,” Houghton says.

TNT Media Entertainment & Lifestyle Services General Manager Danny Geach was at the centre of the company’s operation to beat the bad weather. He says, “The snow made things very difficult to be honest, but from the lack of negative feedback and the fact we helped out Sony DADC in Scotland in particular, we think we did a very good job keeping the shelves stocked and fit for retailing.”

Tesco Entertainment Category Director Rob Salter is similarly pleased with the way the company responded to the snow: “The weather in late November and December clearly impacted both supply chain and customers trying to get to stores in some regions and on some days. Our network coped really well; our distribution operation in Bolton stayed open and our deliveries continued to reach stores, albeit with occasional delays. I am delighted with the performance and the efforts of the whole Tesco team who consistently show what they are made of when we hit problems like such severe weather conditions.”

From replicator and distributor via carrier to stores, the pattern was much the same: effort beyond the call of duty to ensure no home would be without entertainment on Christmas day. There was just one missing link in the chain: the consumer.

Beardsworth says that demand peaked later in the month than in past years but overall volumes were in line with expectations: “The disappointment for everybody has been the impact of the weather on retail. It was a double whammy, coming in the first week of December and then mercilessly in that week before the break, because you just can’t catch up. The impulse to buy is at its peak in the week prior to Christmas Day and it is unfortunate that it was blighted by the weather.”

The Mail Online headline said “Big freeze on Christmas sales: Companies report gloomy festive figures” and some of the internauts who ventured into the real world found it even more hostile than the online environment. When they did leave the comfort of their own desktop, they found yet more obstacles to their “bricks and mortar” experience.

Research firm Synovate reported that in some parts of England and Scotland, one in five retail shoppers got the message and stayed at home during the worst of the snow. Brent Cross Shopping Centre in North London was closed “due to adverse weather” on what should have been one of the busiest days of the year as radio and TV stations asked “Is your journey really necessary?”

Beardsworth notes that there is a point around three days before Christmas when the high street has a major advantage over online as the place to go for last-minute presents: “Online is not much use to anybody from the point where they can’t guarantee next-day delivery. The viability of online diminishes the closer you get to the day.”

The retail employees who braved the wintry weather to open the checkouts were the real heroes of the hour – without their efforts Christmas shopping would have been far less cheery for everyone.