A shrinking window

Starz! tinkering with pay TV expectations

By JOHN DEMPSEY

"The Missing," which opened Nov. 30 of last year, will begin showing on Starz! Aug. 28 -- earlier than the usual one-year window.

NEW YORK -- John Malone's Starz!, the pay TV network that focuses entirely on theatrical movies, is starting to gobble up some of its titles three months sooner than the traditional 12-month wait.

"Radio," from Revolution and Columbia Pictures, one of Starz's pictures from last month, reached the network nine months from its theatrical release, as did New Line's "Secondhand Lions." And two forthcoming Revolution titles will also show up on Starz within nine months: "The Missing" (theatrical release Nov. 30; Starz premiere Aug. 28) and "Mona Lisa Smile" (theatrical Dec. 19; Starz Sept. 18).

HBO and Cinemax are also getting into the early-release act. HBO gloms onto two Columbia titles ("Something's Gotta Give" and "Secret Window") and 20th Century Fox's "Welcome to Mooseport" within 10 months of their debut in the multiplexes.

Cinemax gets its hands on DreamWorks' "House of Sand and Fog" on Oct. 4, about 10 months after its Dec. 3 theatrical date.

"I think we're seeing the beginning of a trend," said Bob Leighton, head of programming for Starz. "More studios are collapsing windows and accelerating the delivery of movies to video."

Movie companies tie the pay TV release of their movies to a specific length of time after the pictures go both to DVD/video (the first major ancillary market), and pay-per-view (the second).

Industry statistics show that the average length of time it takes for a movie to get from the videostore to pay-per-view has shrunk from 54 days in 1998 to 46 days in 2003 (a figure that's down to 44 for the first half of 2004).

One of the reasons movies are getting to the videostores sooner is that they're staying in the theaters for shorter lengths of time. Studios aim most of their new-release marketing muscle toward the buildup to opening week in the theaters.

Movie companies have become more dependent on a big first-week's gross because it can help to offset the dizzying plunge in box office that most movies take in week two and later, as new releases displace older ones faster than ever before.

And most movies harvest the bulk of their revenues from purchase and rentals of DVDs and videos within the first month, which means that it makes sense to get the titles to pay-per-view earlier, when the DVD marketing campaign may still be fresh in viewers' minds.

When PPV gets a movie sooner, the next big ancillary market on the food chain -- pay TV -- will also pick up the movie sooner.

Leighton is particularly bullish on the shorter windows because these early-release movies "could start giving us better ratings."

More movie viewers are important to Leighton because, unlike HBO, which chalks up humongous Nielsen ratings from original series like "The Sopranos" and "Six Feet Under," Starz steers clear of original programming, tying its fate completely to theatrical movies.