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Live from Las Vegas
June 23, 2008

So, many of us are arriving in Las Vegas for Home Media Expo. Actually, the show officially starts tomorrow and there's no way to tell yet how many of us are actually attending, but for many attendees it's the 5th, 8th, 10th, 12th, or way-too-manyeth appearance at the annual confab formerly known as VSDA. 
I saw many familiar faces, and some new ones, at Lionsgate's swanky retailer summit yesterday, and most were planning to move from Lionsgate's digs at the Wynn to the Palms, Palms Place or Rio by today.
We're anxious to see how the new Palms/Rio venue works for the show, which appears to be more spread out, but over a smaller total space, than at the Venetian, if that makes sense.
In terms of lodging, the Palms is certainly not the Venetian. Miss those comfy suites...

Kudos to Lionsgate for putting on another fun and informative show for the lucky invitees, who ranged from established players Target, Circuit City, Blockbuster and VPD, to newer participants including Rite Aid and InMotion Entertainment, which rents and sells DVDs at airports. 
Dodger legend Tommy Lasorda charmed the crowd with his tales of baseball and motivational leadership, and even stayed for dinner, where he hung out with Steve Scavelli of Flash.
Lionsgate's Steve Beeks, Ron Schwartz, Anne Parducci and Michael Youn painted a good picture of the company as one on the move in an industry where things are not as dire as some might believe (and their presentation came in at a slim 2+ hours, cutting some time off years past).
"It's a challenging time, but we will all find a way to profit," Beeks told his guests. The studio has a dozen pictures--including Bangkok Dangerous with Nic Cage, My Best Friend's Girl with Dane Cook and Kate Hudson, My Bloody Valentine in 3-D and Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail-- set to open theatrically before the end of the year that will fit the Lionsgate model of wide releases designed to outperform their box-office in ancillary markets, particularly DVD. Those titles will hit DVD in Q1 2009, when Lionsgate promises to outperform its 9% market share logged in Q1 this year.
The studio is predicting that Blu-ray will return the packaged media biz to about 1% growth per year through 2013, with packaged media continuing to account for 85% of consumers' home entertainment spend in 2013.
The breakdown for 2008 -- $23.6 billion packaged media/$1.5 billion digital downloads. For 2013--$23.2 packaged media, $3.6 billion digital.

Posted by Marcy Magiera on June 23, 2008 | Comments (0)