Family Guy – Volume 7 debuts on the top of the TV Show DVD sales chart with nearly 274,000 units sold in its first week, translating into sales of over $7.5 million.
Very strong TV show DVD seller True Blood: The Complete First Season saw its weekly unit sales drift down 21% to a still impressive 107,000 units, topping the 1 million unit mark after 5 weeks in release. It’s the only TV show in the top 50 DVDs sold for 2009.
USA ratings stalwart Burn Notice – Season Two rang in its first week with sales of almost 91,000 units and $3 million.
Three shows on the DvD sales list last week fell off Weeds – Season Four (after 2 weeks), The Shield – The Complete Seventh Season (after one week) and Prison Break (after 2 weeks).
Two other TV shows that began selling DVDs this week that didn’t appear on the top 30 list were Everwood – The Complete Second Season, and Saving Grace – Season Two. All we know is they sold fewer than 72,800 units for the week.
Two TV shows will begin selling DVDs next week: The Girls Next Door – Season Five, and Reba – The Complete Sixth Season. I wouldn’t be surprised if neither make the top 30 and we don’t see any numbers for them.
US TV Show DVD Sales for Week Ending Jun 21, 2009
| Title | Units this Week | % Change | Total Units | Sales this Week | Total Sales | Weeks in Release |
| Family Guy – Volume 7 | 273,627 | 273,627 | $7,650,611 | $7,650,611 | 1 | |
| True Blood: The Complete First Season | 107,115 | -21.3% | 1,099,995 | $2,922,097 | $37,967,702 | 5 |
| Burn Notice – Season Two | 90,969 | 90,969 | $2,910,098 | $2,910,098 | 1 |
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You can see past weekly lists of TV Show DVD Sales numbers here.
Source: the-numbers.com
Woohoo, True Blood’s still strong as ever.
By units sold, it is the only TV show in the top 50 so far, but in sales revenue, 24 is also in the top 50 (#45). Unlike the weekly charts, the annual charts can be sorted by revenue or units by clicking on the column header.
Quick question: does volume matter more to a studio or revenue in terms of gaging fan support? I know this is a business, obviously the studios want to make money, but if DVD units sold seems to be a pretty good indicator of fan support, wouldn’t the former be more important?
A million units in a month is very, very good for True Blood. It’s almost assured a Top 100 spot now, very impressive. Seems like it’s not slowing down much either, just a 20% drop? It would not surprise me if the volume breaks the 1.5 million mark. That’s gotta make HBO very happy. Looks like they’ve got another hit to replace the Sopranos.
Seriously, why are the HBO shows so much better in quality? I find myself watching that network more and more. At least they don’t repeat formula shows like the broadcast nets do.
Whoa, I’d better stop myself right there or I’m going to rant. Sorry.
Godfather, I’m sure that ultimately revenue is more important than units sold, but they’re so connected that I think it’s a minor distinction. Presumably DVDs are priced to try and maximize profits. As for True Blood’s DVD sales, they actually went up from week 3 to week 4, and a 20% weekly decline isn’t severe compared to the others on the list (which this week all other “old” sellers were movies).
I know, that’s what’s so surprising about this. This is over a month after the release and it’s still selling very well. I’ve been looking at thenumbers.com for a bit now, and most TV series taper off markedly after the 1st week, usually dropping by 50% or more. You can, I think, get a good estimate by simply halving the numbers sold after each week, so Burn Notice, for example, will probably drop to 45,000 or less next week, then 22,000, then 11,000, and so on. There’s probably some kind of average drop that could be figured out, but I’m way too lazy to work that hard on something.
We’re probably looking at the best selling TV show with True Blood here. Actually, here’s a good question, but you’ll probably have to do a bit of work to figure this one out Bill, so you can ignore it if you want: do Cable TV shows in general sell better than broadcast given their approximate audience size? In other words, 24 has about 8-9 million viewers, right, but it’s sold about 400,000 DVD sets. Then pick another Cable only show, like South Park, which I think sold 300,000 with it’s latest set, but gets 2-3 million viewers a show right (I don’t know the average numbers). Either way, that’s a higher “rate” of viewers buying the DVD sets (10-15% for South Park vs. 5% for 24). Obviously you’d need to look at a helluva lot of average ratings and DVD’s sold for each show to figure that one out. But if in fact Cable show viewers are more apt to buy the DVD’s for their show, I’d like to figure out why.
Well, SJP, the average for the first three new episodes of True Blood are 3.6 million.
1.1 million units divided by 3.6 million viewers gives 31% of the audience buying the DVDs, higher than either of your examples. I bet culturally True Blood is a much different creature than most shows (I’d say it’s become a cult classic after not yet a year!)
The_GodfatherSJP: Grey’s Anatomy first season sold above 3 million copies, and Lost second season sold around 2.5 million copies.
Grey’s second season had about 19 million viewers so about 16% of the viewers bought the DVDs. Lost second season had 16 million viewers so about 15.5% bought the DVDs.
Thanks for the numbers TomSD, but what about other shows? CSI? Bones? Battlestar Galactica?
Would be an interesting spreadsheet to look at.
There’s a new chart, covering a weak DVD week, and none of the new releases made the top 30.
7…..Family Guy – Volume 7………….134,157 units…….$3.75 million
12….True Blood – Comp. 1st Season…..87,814 units……..$2.90 million
29….Weeds – Season Four……………36,677 units……..$920,000
Oh, and TB has passed the $40 million mark.