In Demand offers PPV channels for niche pix
In Demand, the dominant pay-per-view distributor of movies and events in the U.S., has opened the door to more offbeat movies by creating two specialized channels. One channel, Cinema In Demand, will schedule movies that would either have little chance of getting a traditional pay-per-view deal, like Lot 47's "Happenstance" and Miramax's "The Closet", or would end up getting relegated to latenight or early-morning slots, like Artisan's "Center of the World", Paramount's "Bride of the Wind" and Universal Focus' "The Man Who Cried".
The second channel, Urban In Demand, will deliver movies "with a strong appeal to the African-American, Hispanic and ethnic markets," as the company put it. Titles include Warner Bros.' "Glitter", with Mariah Carey; Columbia's "Baby Boy", directed by John Singleton; and New Line's "Bones", starring Snoop Dogg.
"We're setting up a new piece of real estate for movies that generally don't do well on pay-per-view," In Demand president and CEO Steve Brenner said. Brenner acknowledged that many of these movies don't get lots of buys because In Demand schedules them in the least desirable time periods.
The two channels, which officially kick off March 1, will become available only to digital subscribers with at least two-dozen PPV choices. Some titles will run on both regular pay-per-view and niche channels, depending on the flow of titles in a given month. For example, Artisan's "Made", with Vince Vaughn; Fine Line's "Hedwig & the Angry Inch" and Screen Gems' "Two Can Play That Game" are available to digital subscribers now on standard pay-per-view, although they won't get as many channels dedicated to them as "Pearl Harbor", "Planet of the Apes" and "Jurassic Park III".
If the experiment works and brings attention to movies that normally would be dwarfed on PPV by the big grossers, Brenner said In Demand could create other genre services similar to the multiplexed pay TV channels of HBO, Showtime and Starz. (Yahoo! News)
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