CinemaNow trims free content offerings

Service experiments, redirect browsers to paid areas

By Ned Randolph -- Video Business, 9/14/2007

SEPT. 14 | Online movie service CinemaNow has been changing how it offers free movie content, with an eye on driving more traffic to paid areas.

Until recently, CinemaNow offered mid-level content—such as behind-the-scenes interviews, b-rated movies and late night movies—for free with the expectation that once people are at the Web site they’d then pay to download or rent a title. But without the proper direction, users were left on their own.

"There was a lot of the traffic," said Curt Marvis, CEO. "A user would go in and bounce around and watch free titles, but the conversion ratio was also a lot smaller than we wanted."

So earlier this summer, CinemaNow reined in its free offerings and started promoting them with relevancy to other titles and new releases.

At press time, the freebie was a video interview with John Cassar, the director and executive producer of the hit series 24, used to kick-off the release of the season-six DVD. A click on the video button takes users to a 24 page featuring the interview along with CinemaNow's Season 6 catalog of episodes, which can be downloaded for $1.99 a piece.

"The truth is we're retooling some ideas about how best to package and drive revenue from different forms of content that we've got," Marvis said. "We've got 10,000 pieces of content on the service, from short films to no name, Baldwin brother movies to studio blockbusters," he said. "We've always believed that different transactional models could be formed around different pieces of content."

Some titles will sell outright, but others might be viewed only by monthly subscribers with unlimited access.

CinemaNow sells movie and TV downloads. Unlike iTunes, CinemaNow also rents titles (see related item, page 5), which are downloaded onto a PC hard drive and eventually purged by digital rights management technology 24 hours after they are opened. Monthly subscribers pay $29.95 for unlimited access to 1,500 titles. The company also offers a burning option for movies from Paramount Home Entertainment and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

"We have by no means abandoned ‘free’ as a concept, but we're toying with new ideas around it," said Marvis.

"The space continues to be one that's taking a lot longer than people anticipated to evolve," he said. "There are a lot of different reasons like content pricing and, more than anything else, the continued lack of inexpensive and convenient hardware to get IP content delivered into the living room."

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