Biz slow over holiday weekend
Weak release slate partly to blame
Eliza Gallo -- Video Business, 7/7/2005
JULY 7 | Sparkling Fourth of July fireworks made for soggy rentals over the recent holiday weekend.People were off at barbeques and pyrotechnics displays and not watching movies, said Curt Waite, owner of My Video Store in Santa Clarita, Cali.
And Michael Becker of New York's The Video Room observed: "We were surprised we did as well as we did this weekend--which was not that great."
Manhattan becomes a ghost town over the Fourth holiday every year, he noted.
"We just choked. We did nothing," said owner Bill Duggan of Videoport in Portland, Maine.
Ted Engen, president of the Video Buyers Group, said the usual middling results from the holiday weekend might have been exacerbated by a weak release schedule.
The news wasn't all bad, however, as national DVD and VHS rental revenue for the week ended July 3 was $153.2 million, according to Rentrak. That's the highest weekly take since late March and down only 1.5% from the comparable week last year.
Additional reporting by Marcy Magiera
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