Comments on: True Blood Nearing 1 Million DVDs Sold After 4 Weeks

By: Wired World » Blog Archive » Happy Fourth of July!

Wired World » Blog Archive » Happy Fourth of July! — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:31:29 +0000

[...] gone off the book quite a bit but I don’t even mind that much. Incidentally, season 1 is selling like hotcakes and well worth the ticket price. If you have HBO, you can watch season 1 and any season 2 episodes [...]

By: True Blood alcanza el millón de DVDs - Blog de Series

True Blood alcanza el millón de DVDs - Blog de Series — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:41:23 +0000

[...] Con solo cuatro semanas en las tiendas norteamericanas, True Blood continua demostrando que es una de las series más importantes del momento al confirmar que su primera temporada ha alcanzado la venta de un millón de copias. [...]

By: Richard Steven Hack

Richard Steven Hack — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:50 +0000

True Blood is definitely more than sex and vampires, although obviously that IS a big part of the appeal – and rightfully so LOL! The show’s quality is considerable in other aspects – the acting, the directing, the writing. The show is really good. And it being “over the top” in many scenes is a plus as well.

It’s truly a shame that a show like this CAN’T be shown on broadcast TV due to the Puritanism of US society – which is one reason WHY cable is eating into broadcast TV.

By: greennogo

greennogo — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:39:19 +0000

I think it’s the sex that’s selling the show so well just as much as it’s the fact that vampires seem to get zeitgeisty about once a decade or so. Since the PG-13ification of everything in American pop culture over the course of the new millenium, the audience for those skin without pornoguilt ‘erotic thrillers’ of yore like ‘Basic Instinct’ and ‘Fatal Attraction’ has been completely neglected, and ‘True Blood’ is the only unsubtitled new game going to fill that void.

By: JS

JS — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:19:47 +0000

The NY Post did a story on this…

http://www.nypost.com/seven/06252009/tv/true_hits_1m_175939.htm

By: The_GodfatherSJP

The_GodfatherSJP — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:24:06 +0000

Just some numbers that might interest you further. 24 Season 7 only did about 400k units in 4 weeks. South Park did about 300k in 6 weeks. THe former is a hit series on broadcast, the latter a hit series for cable. Obviously 24 has more core fans, but not many more than South Park. Yet, 24 has more live viewers.

So does this mean Cable viewers of a TV show may be more “loyal” to their show than Broadcast watchers are? I wonder if in general the proportion of DVD buyers for cable shows are higher than for broadcast, i.e. if 24 gets 8 million viewers a night, but only 400k units sold, that’s 5%, while South Park gets 3 million viewers and 300k sold, for 10%. Might be a good metric to measure fan “loyalty.”

Oh, and I took a look at the 2007 and 2008 Best Selling DVD charts on the site. Heroes Season 1 was a Top 100 TV Show, selling 1.6 million DVD’s, and it placed at #72. The rest of the list is movies or specials, like BBC’s Planet Earth, and #100 had 1.158 million units sold. In 2008, the Office Season 4 sold 1.05 million units to claim #88. Charlie Wilson’s War was #100 with 975,701. Now it’s too early to tell, but based on the past 2 years, I’d say True Blood Season 1 is a good candidate to break the Top 100 list for 2009 when the year ends. Quite a feat for a TV series on Cable.

By: The_GodfatherSJP

The_GodfatherSJP — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:15:29 +0000

Perhaps I can provide some perspective. Both Firefly and Family Guy were big DVD selling hits, they never sold close to a million this fast. More like 300-400k in a few weeks. Same thing for Battlestar Galactica, another Sci-Fi hit, which had about 300k in 3 weeks on sale. You might want to take a look at Star Trek, X-Files, Seinfeld, Friends, and other big hit shows. It’s really a measure of how big the core fanbase is, for True Blood, it’s obviously a big one. I’d like to compare these numbers to the Sopranos DVD sales, or OZ DVD sales, just to compare numbers from other HBO shows. It would not surprise me to find that Sci-Fi series overall tend to sell DVDs more than “regular” television shows which had much larger broadcast audiences.

Remember, this is a premium channel. Just by the fact your watching it means you a) have cable/directTV and b) are affluent enough to afford premium networks. Which means you naturally have a DVD player. The demo’s for this show’s audience are more attractive to advertisers, I’m guessing, because they’ve probably got more money on average. Of course, since HBO has no commercials, that doesn’t matter as much, though I’m sure the group which runs HBO would like to take a lot at these guys viewing habits.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 02:35:03 +0000

For those looking for Everwood numbers the set was to be released on June 16th and the latest list on that site ends on June 14th so it should be on the next list hopefully.

By: Drew

Drew — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:42:39 +0000

I like the show and usually hate anything vampire related. Often, the human characters are more interesting than what the vampires are doing, and I started watching the show because of the (human) lead character.

By: Brian D

Brian D — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:26:56 +0000

True Blood is ok but it’s really nothing that special. There’s a following out there that will watch almost anything vampire related. The same can be said about SciFi and other subcultures. Put these shows on regular TV and they typically don’t last much more then a season.

By: Drew

Drew — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:13:05 +0000

All right. Either way, True Blood’s numbers reflect the addictiveness of this show.

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:59:25 +0000

OK, after being certain that I *knew* that the-numbers.com figures didn’t include Blu-Ray I scoured the site for that explanation and couldn’t find it. Absent that, it’s highly likely I was mistaken (always likely) and they *do* include Blu-Ray.

By: StephenF

StephenF — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:30:02 +0000

Hmm, assuming that the http://www.the-numbers.com’s DVD charts DO NOT include Blu-ray sales and that the http://www.homemediamagazine.com’s charts give accurate shares (you can go back and check their site to get previous weeks share as well) then a bit of number crunching gets you to a total of ~ 1,140,000 units sold for True Blood when Blu-ray sales are included.

By: Drew

Drew — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:50:52 +0000

I am a bit surprised as well that HBO isn’t trumpeting this like crazy, but we fans are doing it for them. The audience’s doubling over the first season is usually attributed to the great word-of-mouth about TB.

True Blood is awesome!

By: JS

JS — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:47:41 +0000

It’s interesting that this isn’t getting more publicity, maybe HBO is waiting until it hits 1 million to do some big press release or something…still, if this is a rare occurrence, you would think entertainment sites that track these things would report it.

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:21:21 +0000

TBFan, interesting list, Blu-Ray share likely means that % of the total DVDs sold were Blu-Ray.

By: TBfan

TBfan — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:14:20 +0000

According to one figure I found (Source: Nielsen VideoScan First Alert) for the week ending June 14, True Blood was in 10th place of the Top 20 Selling Blu-Ray titles. Their Blu-Ray share was 11% for the title.

That is the most recent figures I could find. Maybe you can make more sense of it than I can.

http://www.homemediamagazine.com/top-sellers/top-20-sellers-week-ended-61409

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:55:08 +0000

TBFan, if anyone can find a site that has Blu-Ray numbers, I’ll post them.

By: TBfan

TBfan — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:52:06 +0000

I would really like to know how many units TB sold when they add in the Blu-Ray numbers. Just about everyone I know over on the True Blood Wiki site bought the BR for the extra features.

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:43:45 +0000

Drew is correct, those numbers do not include Blu-Ray.

By: Drew

Drew — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:30:18 +0000

Nehalem: the rating will be up as soon as it is released. I’m on the lookout for the numbers.

And romo, I don’t think The Numbers includes BluRay, but I’m sure if BR is included, TB’s well past the million mark.

By: romo

romo — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:15:07 +0000

It would be interesting to see what % was bluray.

By: Nehalem

Nehalem — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:12:44 +0000

Nicely done True Blood !

Will you post HBO ratings for sunday (True Blood s02e02) when avaible ? Thanks

By: Bill Gorman

Bill Gorman — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:28:16 +0000

George, all the TV shows in the top 30 are in the list above.

By: GEORGE

GEORGE — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:07:53 +0000

WHAT ABOUT EVERWOOD?? IS THERE A CHANCE IT WAS ON THE TOP 30??