FAITH & FAMILY: Online DVD sales still dominant over downloads

A quick search shows that Amazon, which has a dedicated section for Christian DVDs, currently has about 1,800 DVD titles related to Christianity. “This number is always changing based on new products being added to the selection regularly,” Amazon spokeswoman Tammy Hovey says. But only a handful of these titles are available through Amazon’s Unbox video download service.

Amazon officially launched its Christian store in 1999, about five years after the company’s founding. “A genre must have a strong catalog of titles for us to launch a store,” says Hovey. “At that point, we can then break out the store into subgenres, which provide more insight and depth for our customers.”

Ken Davis, a senior VP at Christian Book Distributors, the parent company of ChristianBook.com, which also has been around since the ’90s, isn’t worried about Amazon cutting into his company’s sales. “Competition isn’t anything new to us,” he says. ChristianBook.com carries about 6,000 DVD titles but sells six books for every movie.

Neither company sees Christian downloads as a viable force yet.

ChristianBook.com offers downloads for music, but not video. “Consumers haven’t been as receptive to movie downloads as they are to music downloads,” Davis says. “Is the market just not ready for it? Does it take too long to download movies?”

In the DVD business, Davis has seen progress of a different type. “The biggest change in the Christian market over the years hasn’t been [in distribution technology], but in content,” he says. “The typical videos we used to carry were sermons, talking-head type stuff. Now, thanks to Fox Faith and Lionsgate and other suppliers, Christian fiction has become popular.”

Download site EZTakes has a sizeable Christian movie collection, and some Christian film producers have dabbled in offering movies via streaming or download. But most Christian Internet sites haven’t seen downloads as a significant market.

“We’re probably about five years away from when downloading movies is commonplace,” estimates Steve Thomas, an Illinois-based entrepreneur who recently founded a new entry in the online rental business, FaithandFamilyFlix.com. “We have about 330 customers so far,” Thomas says. “Everything’s done by mail, and our 1,100 titles are all family-friendly films.”

Thomas is focused on content. He likens his venture to Netflix, but says he stays away from films with sex, drugs and gratuitous violence. He carries titles ranging from The Maltese Falcon and It’s a Wonderful Life to The Passion of the Christ.

“Our DVDs can’t have immodesty,” Thomas says. “It’s very difficult to find [films without that] in many of the current mainstream Hollywood releases. We don’t want to be puritans, but we have to draw the line somewhere, and we want to make the line firm.”