Examples:
Star Trek DS9, season 6 and Finding Nemo will be released on tuesday, Nov 4.
Terminator 3 will be released tuesday, Nov 11.
LOTR2 will be released tuesday, Nov 18.
X-Men 2 will be released tuesday, Nov 25.
Pirates of the Carribbean will be released tuesday, Dec 2.
Babylon 5, season 4 will be released tuesday, Jan 6, 2004.
And so on. What’s the deal?
Not all DVDs are released on tuesdays, I’ve seen a few with friday releases, though there is no doubt that tuesday is the norm for the majority of releases.
I don’t have a definitive answer, but I would assume it has something to do with marketing.
I can’t answer but I’ve always noticed the same thing with video games.
This was asked earlier but got no definite answers as to why.
And yes, video games seem to hold to this rule also.
I’ve noticed a lot of games released on Monday, so…
They ship on Friday, arrive on Monday, and are available for sale on Tuesday.
I dunno, just guessing. Here in Australia they’re released on any day, it’s pretty random.
Here in the UK it always seems to be monday for DVDs, Friday for PC games and cinema releases (often with so-called ‘special previews’ on the thursday). No idea why although I would guess that it is to do with shipping concerns, it is easier (and cheaper) to make one delivery per week to the stores of all the titles to be released that week, so the release day tends to be the same each week. As for the cinemas (slight hijack, i know), most people go over weekends, so that is when the newest realeases are shown.
Yup. That’s pretty much it. Studios are very strict about release dates. Everybody has to start on the same day, lest someone get an unfair advantage.
I’m fairly certain it fell on Tuesdays because retaillers can use the Monday to ‘emergency ship’ product if it hasn’t shown up yet. If the street date was Monday, and there was a supply chain problem, you couldn’t get it fixed during the weekend.
It also works as a method of standardization.
CDs do this too. Though, every once in a while, some smartass will release something on a Friday (-just like some movie will open in a theatre on a Wednesday).
That’s not always it. When it comes to rental DVDs and tapes, a lot of stores will get them only the night before the street date. Of course, the gigantic chains will get them further in advance, because they get hundreds and hundreds at a pop and need the time to prepare them.
Movies in general have been released on home video on Tuesdays for a long time. The idea is that normally there are far fewer people in a renting mood during midweek than at either end of the week, so Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and even Mondays are out.
One reason the majority of studios release a majority of their movies on this day of the week is that they figure if people know that Movie X is coming out on Tuesday and don’t find it there in the store, they’ll want Movie Y. So Movie Y should be released either Tuesday or before. And it’s not really smart business to release the movie on a day on which stores are already busy - you save it for when it’s slower, to ensure more people will come in proportionally.
Dantheman from the WDTV forum???
Nope - what’s that?
Oh, never mind then…I know someone at another board with that same user name, that’s all…sorry for the hijack.
Dantheman has it right!
Tuesdays are slow days for retailers and since they make little or no money on new releases they use them as a “get em in the door” tactic.
The big boys of retailing new releases (Walmart, Target, Bestbuy) have agreed on a whole for Tuesdays and have pushed it with distributors and got their way.
I hope Wednesdays are even slower because Tuesday releases usually don’t arrive until then.
I think that the Tuesday release date has a lot less to do with any calculated marketing than with industry inertia. I used to manage record stores back when we still had LPs and they always came out on Tuesday. (why? Probably had to do with allowing enough shipping time so stores all over the country could release on the same day) Eight-tracks and cassettes naturally came out on the same day. When CDs were introduced, they followed suit. When VHS tapes first came out, they were less consistent at first and came out on both Tuesday and Wednesday eventually settling on Tuesday. So it was natural that DVDs would do the same.
It’s a big deal if a store breaks a release date. If competitor finds out and reports the store to the label, they’ll be punished by being forced to recieve all their shipments up to a week late.