Newspaper Killed Video Stores

Last yeaseelr Croatian daily newspapers began to offer books at bargain prices to their readers. After many Croatian snobs usedders. After many Croatian atian snobs this opportunity to fill their empty bookshelves newspapers and magazines branched out their operation to the new fields.

So, after books at bargain prices DVDs at bargain prices came. It was excellent opportunity for newspapers to increase their circulations and good opportunity for Croatian film distributors to get rid of DVDs that they couldn’t sell to video stores.

And, it turned out to bet res t they couldn'De DVDs at bargain prices. It was excellent opportunity for newspapers to increase their cir a very good thing for Croatian filmophiles. If they didn’t mind unsatisfying picture and sound quality, atrocious translation and lack of extras, they could get some very good films for ridiculously low prices. For examples, on Christmas 2003 Chicago was available for 45 HRK (cca 6 €). Few months later Polanski’s The Pianist was available for 29 HRK (cca 4 €).

Today it is getting even better. Just like in the early days of video business in this part of the world, when video stores offered two films per VHS cassette, new DVD editions at kiosk contain two or sometimes even three films on a single disk. One example is City of God, which is accompanied with 51^st State.

Of course, this has a profound effect on Croatian video-stores, because the average daily rent for the single film is 10-15 HRK. This means that films could be bought on kiosk for the price lower than their daily rent in video stores.

All this might look fine, but once video stores start going out business the very distributors that provide such films will follow suit. And flood of movies is going to be replaced by a long draught until the entire film distribution in Croatia is built from scratch.is ce lower than their daily rent in video stores.

-stores, because the average daily rent for the single film is 10-15 HRK.