Entertainment

TV: DVDs of favorite series are clicking with viewers, who can tune in anytime they want

08:48 AM CST on Thursday, December 15, 2005

By MANUEL MENDOZA / The Dallas Morning News

Matthew Felling started noticing that fewer of his friends were available for weekend outings. Then he went to the movies on a Friday night "and it was like that Twilight Zone where there's only one man in town."

Where was everyone?

According to sales and rental figures and anecdotal evidence, lots of people are home watching DVDs, many of them catching up with their favorite TV shows. Mr. Felling, media director at Washington, D.C.'s Center for Media and Public Affairs, calls these viewers "DVD MIAs." They're holing up at home for "Lost weekends," named after the popular ABC mystery series.

And it's not just the surging number of TV shows on DVD driving the phenomenon, though that's the key component for the moment. Other technologies such as digital video recorders and cable's growing video-on-demand offerings are making it possible for consumers to power watch multiple episodes of The Sopranos, Desperate Housewives and other acclaimed series back-to-back-to- back, free of commercials.

Even the TV networks, which depend on advertising, are trying to get a piece of the power-watching action, scheduling marathons of their shows. NBC has done it with My Name Is Earl, and Fox with Prison Break on its cable sister, FX.

"Between DVDs, TiVo and on-demand viewing, TV watching is being completely overhauled," Mr. Felling says. "The era of appointment television is over, and the balance of power has shifted almost entirely to the consumer. That's what technology does."

TV-on-DVD releases have snowballed to fuel and capitalize on power watching – 70 percent of all TV series on disc were released in the past year, says Steve Swasey, director of corporate communications for the rental service Netflix. And they're flying out of the warehouse.

Since the first-season DVD of Lost was released in September, Netflix has shipped almost 400,000 copies to its subscribers. Customers have ordered 4.4 million copies of the first five seasons of The Sopranos, the show that launched power watching when it first started coming out on disc in 2000. TV DVDs now account for 15 percent of the million titles Netflix ships daily – 23.5 million in total since 1999, Mr. Swasey says.

Like Blockbuster and other rent-by-mail services, Netflix charges a flat monthly fee. You can order as many DVDs as you like, though there are limits on how many you can have out at a time. It's cheaper than subscribing to a bunch of premium channels or buying the disc sets, a price point that's luring more and more customers.

Dr. Peter Aiken, associate professor of information services at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, is one of them. He's way behind, having just finished the first season of The West Wing. And he's only on the second season of The Sopranos. But that's OK with him.

"We're taking more control, just like the VCR enabled us to watch our television shows when we wanted to watch them, rather than when the networks wanted us to," Dr. Aiken says. "There are more choices."

While DVDs come without commercials and DVRs make it possible to skip them, all is not lost for the advertiser-supported networks – yet. The same corporations own the studios making the shows, and they're raking in billions of dollars in disc sales a year, according to published figures.

"Putting product out on DVD or any other platform allows us to service viewers in a new way," says Bruce Gersh, senior vice president of business development for Touchstone Television and ABC Entertainment.

DVDs also appear to be driving up the audience for ongoing TV series, especially hits with serialized formats that jump from cliffhanger to cliffhanger. ABC's Lost, again, is a prime example. The number of viewers for the sophomore series has jumped from 16 million last season to 19 million so far this year. It's no coincidence that the first-year DVD was released just before the new season began.

"Part of the strategy is trying to figure out how to get the biggest marketing push," Mr. Gersh says. "It gives the audience a chance to catch up, and these are shows that fans are very passionate about. With a show like Lost, we've noticed that people are buying the DVDs or the downloads because they're looking for additional clues."

Before the power-watching phenomenon, the conventional wisdom was that such plot-heavy shows weren't suited for repeat viewings because the audience already knew what was coming. That's changed. It turns out fans want to pore over the episodes. With complex, layered series such as The Sopranos, the audience can gain a deeper understanding of the characters and relive favorite story lines.

Mr. Felling thinks the advent of big-screen, high-tech TV sets also is contributing to power watching. "It's like when you buy a new car, you'll make up excuses to drive. When you buy a 34-inch plasma, you start trying to get a higher return on your investment by spending more time with it."

Ryan Murphy, creator of the FX series Nip/Tuck, says he has friends who don't watch his show until the latest season comes out on DVD.

"They can do a massive orgy of viewing and watch it all in like two days. Other people I know do that with 24 and Six Feet Under and The Sopranos. It's 44 solid minutes of drama with no interruptions. And if a show has cliffhangers, you don't have to wait forever. It's almost like instant gratification, which is what our culture's about now."

Prison Break creator Paul Scheuring says power watching "is a new culture where people want to get the box set, or they want Netflix to send them four or five DVDs and just knock them out, one right after another. In a lot of ways, it's like reading a novel. It's like each disc is a chapter. They just want to keep powering through."

E-mail mmendoza@dallasnews.com