These numbers are sales estimates via The-Numbers.com and do not include Blu*Ray sales.
For the week ending September 27, 2009 the second week of release for the Grey’s Anatomy’s fifth-season DVD set again led all TV Show DVD sales for the week with an additional 84,080 units and $3.043 million in revenue. Grey’s two week totalks are now 343,169 units and $12.52 million in revenue.
The first week of release for the third season of 30 Rock was next with 83,902 units and $2.64 million in sales.
The third week of release for The Office season five brought an additional 72,111 units and $2.38 million. The three week total is 660,659 units and $22.27 million.
Next up was the first week of release of season two, the final season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, with 64,966 units and $2.38 million in sales. That’s slightly down in units from the first week sales of season one, when it sold 71,279 units. Season one had far less revenue the first week of sales with $1.35 million, but it had a much lower unit cost because it only contained nine episodes.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia season four sold another 63,358 units and $1.71 million in its second week on the charts. It now has sold 264,764 units with $6.77 million in revenue.
The second week of release for The Big Bang Theories second season sold another 57,939 units and $1.68 million for a two week total of 214,023 units and $6.2 million in sales.
The first season of Castle debuted with 53,294 units and $1.39 million in sales.
In its fourth week of release, Heroes season three added another 52,282 units and $1.92 million for a four week total of 478,202 units and $18.67 million in sales.
The first season of The Mentalist sold 44,005 units in its first week for $1.63 million.
Fringe sold 37,817 more units for an additional $1.51 million in its third week. Its three week total is 200,897 units and $7.52 million in sales.
Mad Men clawed its way back on the list selling an additional 35,609 Units for $704,346 in revenue. Its eleven week totals are 295,810 units for $9.07 million.
For the first time in a long while, the first season of True Blood was not among the top 30 we see. But you can still track its totals on the annual top 50 list since its still the ninth best selling DVD this year (all DVDs, including movies) and since its release on May 19, 2009, it has sold over 1.6 million units for $55,670,381 in revenue. Its closest competitor for now among its TV show brethren is The Office season five (see above).
| Title | Units this Week | % Change | Total Units | Sales this Week | Total Sales | Weeks in Release |
| Grey’s Anatomy: The Complete Fifth Season | 84,080 | -67.50% | 343,169 | $3,043,696 | $12,515,990 | 2 |
| 30 Rock: Season Three | 83,902 | 83,902 | $2,642,074 | $2,642,074 | 1 | |
| The Office – Season Five | 72,111 | -51.90% | 660,659 | $2,378,942 | $22,274,364 | 3 |
| Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: The Complete Second Season | 64,966 | 64,966 | $2,370,609 | $2,370,609 | 1 | |
| It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Season 4 | 63,358 | -68.50% | 264,764 | $1,705,597 | $6,772,972 | 2 |
| The Big Bang Theory: The Complete Second Season | 57,939 | -62.90% | 214,023 | $1,679,652 | $6,204,527 | 2 |
| Castle: The Complete First Season | 53,294 | 53,294 | $1,385,111 | $1,385,111 | 1 | |
| Heroes – Season Three | 52,282 | 4.20% | 499,561 | $1,915,090 | $18,673,044 | 4 |
| Dora the Explorer: Dora Saves the Crystal Kingdom | 51,508 | 51,508 | $772,105 | $772,105 | 1 | |
| The Mentalist: The Complete First Season | 44,005 | 44,005 | $1,627,745 | $1,627,745 | 1 | |
| Fringe: The Complete First Season | 37,187 | -29.00% | 200,897 | $1,505,702 | $7,518,767 | 3 |
| Mad Men: Season 2 | 35,609 | 295,810 | $704,346 | $9,068,857 | 11 |
You can see past weekly lists of TV Show DVD Sales numbers here.
Source: the-numbers.com
Yet again I am mystified by the tastes of the majority of Americans.
I’m mystified that people buy DVD sets of contemporary TV shows in the first place.
It seems odd that Castle beat The Mentalist in first week DVD sales
when (according to the ratings) The Mentalist is far more popular. I personally prefer Castle but I’m supposedly in the minority. Oh well, good for Castle – hope it’s allowed a full season.
dvikib, viewing audience size and DVD sales are far from correlated. True Blood has by far the most DVD sales of any TV show this year, and its audience size, certainly before this season, was smaller than any non-CW show on broadcast television.
I think a lot of times people buy DVD sets of shows they’ve heard good things about but haven’t watched so they can kind of catch up on what others are talking about O.o
There’s not always a correlation between how many people watch a show and how many are willing to pay the money to purchase it.
For example, I have heard that Two & A Half Men does not sell nearly that well when compared to how robust it’s ratings are. While quite a large number of the fans of a show like BSG seem to also want to add it to their collections.
why is The Big Bang Theory being referred to as “The Big Bang Theories”?
@Jesse that is true..i bought the BSG series set b/c of all the good things everyone said about it..i was not disappointed!
@ Jessie,
I don’t know if a lot of people buy DVD sets in order to try out a show, but I often have.
Shows that I’ve purchased without having seen any episodes have included “The 4400″, “Angel”, “Babylon 5″, “Big Bang Theory”, “Buffy”, “Burn Notice”, “Crusade”, “Dead Like Me”, “Deadwood”, “Entourage”, “Extras”, “Friday Night Lights”, “Jeremiah”, “Six Feet Under”, “Sliders”, “Undeclared”, “Veronica Mars”, “The Wire” and “Wonderfalls”. And I have the complete “Farscape” Set on order, so I will try that one out soon too.
ditto to the big bang theory and friday night lights
plus fnl was dirt cheap…i got it for 10$ hah!
I got FNL S1 & 2 for $13.00 each. Not bad, but not quite as good, darn it! lol.
I found TBBT S1 for I think $14.00. That’s the lowest that I’ve seen that one.
AO says:
“Shows that I’ve purchased without having seen any episodes have included ‘The 4400′, ‘Angel’, ‘Babylon 5′, ‘Big Bang Theory’, ‘Buffy’, ‘Burn Notice’, ‘Crusade’, ‘Dead Like Me’, ‘Deadwood’, ‘Entourage’, ‘Extras’, ‘Friday Night Lights’, ‘Jeremiah’, ‘Six Feet Under’, ‘Sliders’, ‘Undeclared’, ‘Veronica Mars’, ‘The Wire’ and ‘Wonderfalls’. And I have the complete ‘Farscape’ Set on order, so I will try that one out soon too.”
In that case, I’d point out that Criterion has reissued “Berlin Alexanderplatz.”
Thanks for the suggestion Boris. I’ll look into it.
I bought the first season of TSCC on DVD, but I’m not sure I’ll buy season two. Just easier to watch the episodes on my hard drive. But maybe the extras might be worth it. Of course, I need to find some change in my pocket first…
Show I’m now hot for is Hustle, having watched two episodes of season five. Unfortunately, with my Internet access curtailed, and the TV site I usually get downloads from having screwed up the Hustle downloads, it may be a while before I can get the episodes from somewhere.
I agree @Jesse, I bought Weeds Season one and True Blood Season One without ever seeing an episode. They’re shows I really enjoy now.
As for the Office and 30 Rock, these are shows I can watch over and over again, so I always buy them.
Yeah, why is The Big Bang Theory referred to as “The Big Bang Theories”, it should be “The Big Bang Theory’s…”
I’d like to see separated data for Blu-Ray only
Can’t add lots of insight but I can note that I never buy series to try them out. (we now have access to a good library and that is what that is for).
The last two DVD sets that came into my house (via purchase) were Ally McBeal and Grey’s Anatomy, and before that, Scrubs and House (whichever were their latest seasons)
Actually guys, that’s just DVD sales on that chart. It excludes Blu-Ray. According the Nielsen Videoscan Chart (link:http://www.homemediamagazine.com/top-sellers/top-20-sellers-week-ended-92709)
TSCC is number 9, yes, there’s no hard data, but if you look at the Percent Sales you’ll see that 33% of its units were Blu-Ray. The-numbers.com chart excludes this. It’s also why the Videoscan chart and this chart don’t add up: Videoscan adds in Blu-ray sales. And that’s not the only difference: Grey’s Anatomy is at #17 on the sellers list not #7 on The-numbers.com, Castle is at #14 not #17, and the list goes on.
Why the discrepency? The-numbers.com is the same kind of chart as Videoscan, its estimated sales, not actual sales. The difference is, The-numbers.com reports its estimated figures, Videoscan and Rentrak (link: http://www.videobusiness.com/index.asp?layout=marketData&content=topdvdsellers) just reports everything as a percent value of the top seller (that’s what the INDEX value means). You’ll also note that the Rentrak list also differs substantially from Videoscan and The-numbers.com, and it’s just a listing of the DVD sales, not Blu-ray.
Which is precisely why you TVBTN guys should just look at the estimates on The-numbers.com. I would keep an eye on the Videoscan list for one reason though: it gives you a percent value of sales through Blu-Ray. TSCC’s Season 2 Blu-Ray sales are quite high at 33%, which means that the total sales in the first week are really about 100,000 by The-numbers.com chart (65k DVD sales + 35k Blu-ray sales, yes I rounded off).
But no one here should think this as an accurate estimate by itself. Just compare the RENTRAK numbers for TSCC, which says it’s INDEX value is 16.8% of Wolverine’s DVD sales. Well, if The-numbers.com estimate is accurate, that’s 16.8% of about 600,000 DVDs, or about 105,000. My oh my, that’s a big difference from The-numbers.com isn’t it? And that’s just one case, you can do this with any of the TV series on this list and come up with different numbers, and they will differ wildly. That’s because each of these charts, Rentrak, Videoscan, The-numbers.com, tracks different retail outlets. They get their data from different sources. It’s not a repeat measurement of the same source. Videoscan doesn’t track Walmart, for example, and I believe Rentrak does.
TSCC seems to be selling well.
I hope the fans keep buying the DVDs and Blurays because it will bring more incentives for the WB and Halcylon (or whoever is with the rights of Terminator in the future) to do a continuation of the series in a direct-to-DVD movie.
What an excellent show this is. I tore the wrapper off and popped it in. I couldn’t wait to see Season 2. It is a great show. I highly recommend that everyone buy a copy as this is the best way to demonstrate that the show should be continued.
It is excellent. And I can rewatch episodes and appreciate something new in every scene.
a joy.
Are blu-rays selling that well these days? Most people I know don’t even own a blu-ray player and still buys dvds.
Estefferson Torres, those sales are not “well” for TSCC. It’s mediocre at best. With those numbers, it won’t be on the chart next week.
Blu-Ray makes up about 10-15% of sales right about now, and the percentage is increasing for a couple of reasons: people are buying more Blu-Rays, and DVD purchases on the whole keep shrinking.
Julia, I agree, TSCC sales aren’t strong, they’re really average when you factor Blu-Ray in (to about 100k all told). If you check the Nielsen Videoscan chart, you’ll find that Grey’s Anatomy, 30 Rock, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia aren’t offered in Blu-Ray, they’re DVD only. The Office Season 5 only had 5% of sales this week through Blu-Ray, last week it was 4% and the first week it was 6% (I’m using the Videoscan charts to get this numbers). Crank 2 had Blu-Ray sales of 17, 18 and 20% for it’s weeks on the charts.
The point? Blu-Ray percentages stay pretty constant as time passes. TSCC is going to have Blu-Ray sales of about 30-35% for the next few weeks, and that results in a lower number on the The-numbers.com chart. Why? Because this chart only tracks DVD sales.
Because this chart only tracks DVD sales.
I’m pretty sure it tracks both.
The_GodfatherSJP the precise reason we use The-Numbers (and our understanding is that those estimates DO include Blu*Ray) is because it posts both unit sales, and $revenue estimates freely. Rentrack and Videoscan do not. I don’t think our readers would find mere rankings and indexes as useful. It’s the type of thing we’d stop producing altogether before spending hours a week on as it’s just not that interesting to most of our sites’ readers.
Indeed, there are differences between $ and unit sales, and the units weekly default list is sorted by units, not revenue. I wish it were easy to sort both ways (as you can with their yearly indexes).
Julia, it doesn’t. Couple of ways I know how:
1) Divide the Total revenue by units sold, you get the approximate sale value of the unit. For TSCC, that’s $36.48 dollars, and the listed price for the REGULAR DVD set is 34-38 dollars online and at retail outlets. The Blu-Ray price is anywhere from 45-50 dollars.
2) I emailed The-numbers.com and asked myself, and they told me just what I posted, it’s DVD sets only no Blu-Ray. Want a copy of their reply?
Robert, I agree, you shouldn’t post the other charts INDEX values as there’s no hard data (percents/rankings don’t count). I do think the Blu-Ray percentage of sales might be useful to consider though, especially since not all DVD sets come in that format. Just a thought. One caveat, in addition to it being another percentage value, is that the other charts only go to #20 on their lists, not #30 like this one.
But I think it is worthwhile to mention if a particular TV set has WAY above average BluRay sales, which TSCC Season 2 does. This isn’t a joke, check the charts over at homemediamagazine.com yourself. Most TV series have Blu-Ray sales of 10% or lower from their total. FOX sets tend to be the exception, as both Dollhouse and Fringe had Blu-Ray sales of 20% of their totals. And, as I noted previously, this rate tends to stay fairly constant over time with movies and TV series.
P.S. If you’re not convinced with TSCC, I’ll do it with Wolverine too. Nielsen Videoscan says 24% of those sales are through Blu-Ray last week and 27% the first week. It’s sold 3,019,131 units on your chart for $50,937,453 in total revenue. That’s about $16.87 per unit retail. Well, guess what price that best matches up with? The sale Price for the regular DVD, $15.99 at Best Buy and Amazon. The Blu-Ray price is $23.99 on Best Buy. If it’s sold 3,019,131 units, and 25% of those were Blu-Ray, then it’s sold 2,264,348 DVDs for $36,206,928.52 and 754783 Blu-Ray units for $18,107,238.17, a grand total of $54,314,166.69. And that’s probably low, since I arbitrarily assigned 25% of sales to Blu-Ray for easy calculation. That’s 4 million the value is off by. It doesn’t add up.
Blu-ray sales do matter somewhat, but 33% of an already low volume release is not ‘that’ great’. It adds an additional 20,000 units, but you are forgetting that Terminator fits the Blu-ray PS3 demographic.
No one noticed that Greys Season 5 did not hit Blu-ray this year? Disney delayed it because Season 4 sold so poorly due to it not being a gamer-type series.
Brad, actually it adds about 33-35k units to the numbers from the chart above, since that counts DVD sales only. I rounded it off to 100k for easy math. Yes, it does mean that TSCC sold best of all the TV series when you factor in Blu-ray. But so what? 100K is average sales. Not poor, but not great either. I acknowledge that. But because the Blu-Ray/DVD split for TSCC is abnormally high, it results in lower numbers on this chart.
The norm for a series depends upon the network, really. True Blood jumps from 10 to 20% of sales through Blu-Ray depending upon the week, Heroes is at 12-13%, FOX series sell at about 15-20%. But those are the BIGGEST movers. Most series sell at about 5-10%. TSCC’s rate is what you see for new movie releases these days. House, Desperate Housewives, 2 and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, and Castle don’t have a Blu-Ray release, so the numbers you’re seeing on this chart actually do account for total sales.
And if you still don’t believe me that The-numbers.com is just DVD sales, not Blu-Ray, then compare these 2 charts. It’s the week of a release of Gladiator and Braveheart on Blu-Ray.
The-Numbers.com :
http://www.the-numbers.com/dvd/charts/weekly/2009/20090906.php
Videoscan:
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/top-sellers/top-20-sellers-week-ended-9609
Notice how those two movies don’t even make the Numbers.com list, yet they’re at 7th and 8th respectively with an INDEX value of 37 and 31.66 respectively. That would correspond to sales of 100 to 130k on The-numbers.com chart IF IT WAS TOTAL SALES. So why aren’t they present?
Simple. According to Nielsen, 96-97% of their sales were Blu-Ray. So are we all agreed then? The-numbers.com is just DVD sales without Blu-Ray?
Why oh why do I get the feeling Rob and Bill haven’t read a word of what I just said…
Godfather,sorry, I’ve been busy. You may be right.
Translation: you emailed the site asking for clarification and you’re double checking the math I used to come up with my revenue figures, right?
Godfather: translation, we simply don’t care as much as you do! There is no more to read into it. I agree that it seems likely that The-Numbers isn’t producing Blu*Ray results. But you know what? That won’t make ANY difference for TSCC’s prospects for renewal!
You have a huge interest here, I suggest *you* blog on it! If you’re regularly producing the best, most comprehensive TV Show DVD sales analysis, we’ll happily link to it. But for our purposes, this is still just fine. If it’s not fine for you, that’s OK with me.
Without being offensive, Mr. Seidman you might want to post a caveat next to any of your information. Something along the lines of ‘we know we are wrong but we just don’t care’
Seriously, why post values you know are incorrect ? You are better off just linking to sites if you know the numbers are crap.
kyle, we know we are using the numbers from “the-numbers” and we say so. Not only do we link to them, we cite it as the source. We don’t use the lists that Godfather cited not because they are not useful, but because they don’t contain unit sales or revenue. Though in fairness, I think it’s safe to say we can (and should) begin including a disclaimer that it doesn’t include Blu*Ray sales.
The numbers are not crap, they just aren’t all inclusive. They still are highly indicative of the TV Show DVD sales.
Robert, okay….
It’s not about prospects for renewal. Show’s done and gone. But a lot of people, myself included, and more importantly, YOU TWO, thought that the data represented in that chart is an estimate of total sales. It’s not, it’s DVD sales without Blu-Ray. You want to know why I made the same mistake? Because the first time I got this information was when I came to your site, that’s why. And it’s very easy to correct: just say the sales don’t include Blu-ray.
And, given the increasing size of Blu-ray sales in the current market, it’s very important to note this, especially when you have items that have a large proportion of Blu-Ray sales, like movies and some DVD sets. Forget TSCC, how about Fringe, whose Blu-Ray sales are about 20%? That means its total sales aren’t about 200,000, they’re actually about 250,000. Or how about Heroes, who’s Blu-Ray sales are 10-13%, meaning its total sales aren’t 500,000 but 550,000 to 575,000. And True Blood goes up even further, with Blu-Ray sales between 10 and 20% every week, meaining it actually has 1.8-1.9 million in total sales, not 1.58.
Moreover, several of the sets sold on that list, like Grey’s Anatomy, aren’t available in Blu-Ray format. It makes a difference in units and revenue, especially since Blu-Ray sets cost more.
Godfather, I completely agree that it’s easy to fix by saying “it doesn’t include Blu*Ray” sales. I’ll do that now.
By the way, we NEVER thought those estimates from The-Numbers were anything but estimates.
Thank you, and I thought it was an estimate to, just of the wrong thing (Total sales).
But you’re going to have to do something to incorporate Blu-Ray sales of DVD sets, especially as time passes. What, I don’t know, unless you want to use percentages from another chart, like I did.
No, sorry. Other than adding the disclaimer WE won’t be doing anything differently. You WANT us to do something differently, but we won’t be.
Edit: there is VERY little value to us in providing this data. It’s NOT very well read on our site. It could be that The-Numbers will need to add Blu*Ray as it becomes an increasingly important part of sales. But for us, it’s doing what we’re doing vs. not doing it at all. Adding the complexity of sorting through various different lists isn’t worth it for us.
I wanted to clarify though – I think it’s reasonable to want to see total sales including Blu*Ray but unless or until there is a very simple way for us to do that, it’s not something we’re going to worry about.
Well, that’s your prerogative. But you ARE going to be under-reporting sales and revenue for TV sets in the future unless you figure something out.
Since I can’t edit, I have to post another bit:
Then might I suggest you simply note which titles are also available in Blu-Ray and which are not?
Godfather, estimate or not, Blu-ray or not, the only thing this list is really good for is relative comparisons anyway. For example, if a show’s on the bubble, but has in the past produced relatively good DVD sales that’s a plus, low sales would be a negative. That’s about it. As long as all the estimates use the same method that’s possible.
Digging around to figure out what’s available in Blu-ray isn’t worth the effort. In fact, my opinion is that this entire post isn’t worth the effort vs. the traffic it generates, but it Robert likes posting it.
You may suggest it, but please see the note above. Even *that* adds a level of complexity we’re not willing to undertake.
For now, I still think the numbers from the the-numbers serve as a very good proxy of relative TV Show DVD sales. True Blood is still the best selling TV Show DVD by a LONG shot so far this year, and the Office is still a very distant second. For our purposes, the relative info is good enough. I’m sorry that it isn’t for you personally, but I also know that you will continue to comb through various different lists. Again, I suggest you blog about it! You have much more passion about the subject matter than we do.
I think that excluding the Blu*Ray gives a severly distorted picture of the success of the product overall. If a product is not being sold in Blu*Ray at all, of course it’s DVD sales will be higher than a product that has a third of its sales coming in Blu*Ray format. It seems that overall, TSCC may be the most successful TV DVD of the week, but these numbers do not reflect that and place it at number 4. That is very misleading and does not reflect the overall situation.
PS. I think the-numbers.com should be including the Blu*Ray numbers, I’m not placing all the blame on TVBTN just saying the conclusions TVBTN reaches based on those numbers are flawed.
Max, when you find a better DVD sales list please email us and we will post it.
Until then, complaining about this list is a waste of everyone’s time.
100k total for the first week isn’t “successful” if you define successful as strong sales. That’s really average overall. It’s just not the weak 65k as reported. The Mentalist and Castle are DVD only, no Blu-Ray as far as I can tell, so they’re 50k respectively are pretty weak.
You know, I gotta say, it does seem that certain networks do get better DVD sales then others. CBS shows get anywhere from 10 to 20 million viewers for their programs yet shows like the Mentalist, Criminal Minds, even NCIS doesn’t sell well (200k DVD units, it’s not available in Blu-Ray) and it has 20 million viewers for its premiere. Same thing with ABC. Seems like FOX, NBC, and Cable networks get a lot more DVD buys for fewer viewers.
Heroes does better than Fringe DVD saleswise. Keep it up and Heroes might get a fifth season
Well, couple of caveats:
1) Heroes has been out longer than Fringe, by 1 week, that’s some of its sales
2) Heroes budget is over 4 million an episode. I don’t know Fringe’s but I seriously doubt it’s that high, Heroes is very much the exception.
3) Those DVD sales keep falling season by season. It over 1 million DVDs (who knows how many Blu-Ray) for its first season.
So Dollhouse out-sold TSCC in their respective first weeks…
@rOckmypants
Actually it didnt.
TSCC-64,966
DH-62,226
Also,
TSCC – 33% of sales in Blu*Ray
Dollhouse – 20% sales in Blue*Ray.
TSCC outsold Dollhouse by at least 20 000 units overall.
I was just instigating for fun, but…
@Max – I don’t understand these % numbers, or why Blu Ray matters in regards to this chart. This chart is DVD numbers, not Blu Ray. Dollhouse sold more DVD copies in its first week than TSCC. Done.
@J
From the-numbers, as reposted here at TVBN:
Dollhouse – Season One 67,226
r0ckmypants, according to The Numbers it was 62,226. 67,226 was probably a typo that was fixed after Robert posted it to this site.
@r0ckmypants
No they didn’t.The-numbers posted 62,226 units for DH.Just like I said.
Link for proof.
http://www.the-numbers.com/dvd/charts/weekly/2009/20090802.php
TSCC outsold DH in both DVD and Blu*Ray, for an overall estimate of about 20 000 more units counting both formats.
Julia, it is of course possible that the typo was mine to begin with — that’s in the “I’ll never know for sure, now” file. the-numbers does do revisions (sometimes sweeping where everything is impacted, sometimes individual shows), and we don’t go back and revise our past-posts when they do. Another argument for ceasing the production of these reports altogether!
I’ll just pop in to say a few things:
1. TB had its lowest week yet at about 20,000 units.
2. In June, The Numbers revised all sales figures down 10 to 20%. My gut feeling is that was the point where Blu Ray sales were factored out.
3. I love these posts. These and the Renew/Cancel are the reasons I come here.
Robert, since the 67,226 was in the prose and the chart of the TVBTN post, I gave you the benefit of the doubt of not having the same typo twice.
Where is this weeks numbers?