If Hollywood is suddenly so enamored with making its products available on the Web, why are five of the industry's biggest studios looking to get out of the digital download business?
Business
Week has learned that Movielink, the movie-download site jointly owned by Paramount, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros. and MGM, has been on the block for months now. The site, which has been around
since 2002, isn't drawing significant traffic or downloads--about 75,000 per month according to a video research firm--and now the studios want out. Last year, Movielink's board barely rejected an
offer from Blockbuster for about $70 million--presumably they wanted more money. Meanwhile, telecom and cable providers like AT&T and Comcast, which have been looking to get into the content
business, have all held talks with the movie-downloads company, unnamed sources said. The competing Hollywood studios are looking to get out of the venture because they need what
Business
Week says is "an honest broker third party, free from the competing strategies that have sometimes paralyzed Movielink." To date, the site has little if any visibility partly due to a virtually
nonexistent marketing program.
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