Five Questions With Cameron Janes, Director, Walmart.com Digital Media

Authored by Jay Baage on February 7, 2007 - 2:16pm.

DMW talked to Cameron Janes, Director of Walmart.com Digital Media, about what the company will do differently this time and how it plans to grow from an 80 to an 800 pound gorilla in digital distribution.

Wal-Mart Stores on Tuesday announced a digital partnership with all of the six major Hollywood studios — Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox and Universal. Basically, the new partnership enables Wal-Mart to sell digital movies and television shows on its website (www.walmart.com/videodownloads) for prices that will range from $12.88 to $19.88 on the day of the DVD release. Older movies will start at $7.50, while TV shows start at $1.96 an episode (as compared to $1.99 on iTunes).

It is a big step forward for digital video since Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer and second-largest corporation. Wal-Mart already accounts for a large percentage of all DVDs sold in the US and that leverage was a reason it was able to get all studios onboard. Tuesday’s announcement puts Wal-Mart head-to-head with e-tailers like Amazon.com, CinemaNow and iTunes, and given the chain's reputation for price cutting, this move could drive down the cost of digital downloads in the long run. It is also a come-back for Wal-Mart after the online DVD rental fiasco, which led to that the company finally surrendering to competitor Netflix.

Does this move mean that Wal-Mart believes that the DVD is dead?
No, we don’t believe that the DVD is dead. We see that there will be multiple formats existing simultaneously. We want to be able to offer customers video in whatever way they want to purchase it. We see a healthy business going forward for DVDs, next generation DVDs like HD DVD and Blu-Ray, as well as downloading.

Wal-Mart is famous for driving down prices. Will you try to continue to press prices downward for video downloads?
We have the same policy of everyday low prices online as well as in the stores. We will look into doing different combination offers for digital and physical products to bring people into the stores.

Wal-Mart did not do so well in the online rental market for DVDs and finally pulled out altogether. What makes you believe you will succeed this time around?
Our experiment with DVD rentals was a solid learning experience. We listened to our customers and they told us that Netflix has a great offering and that we should partner with them. So that is what we did. This time around it is not about rentals – this is selling products and that is what we excel at.

I noticed that you have all the major movie studios onboard, but only one major television network, Fox. Why is that?
That is not true, we have MTV Networks onboard, as well and they include a bunch of channels like VH1 and Nickelodeon. We’re looking to expand our offering of television shows available for download and grow our catalogue every day.

Why should people buy video content at Walmart.com and not on iTunes?
We think that we have taken the browsing experience a step forward, from when we were doing rentals, through our technology partner HP. Our Movie Connection functionality lets the customer find movies in a whole new way.

Joakim Baage

Related Links:
Wal-Mart Launches Beta of Video Downloads Store

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Comments

Walmart's "BETA" service

Submitted by Joel Green (not verified) on February 12, 2007 - 6:52am.

This service, so far, is horrible! The help files on the site are misguiding when it comes to how you play your files on Xbox360, and on how to back up your movies to DVD/CD. I called their so-called customer support line only to be told, "sorry, but we are in beta still...". This is just another pathetic excuse at how large companies can rip people off and get away with providing bad service. Now I have paid for a movie that I can't watch on my TV via Xbox360, and can't back up to disc. Guess I should be happy with just sorry....I'll never use walmart again.

no firefox support!

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on February 13, 2007 - 4:20pm.

We're sorry ... Our website requires the browser Internet Explorer version 6 or higher. It appears that you are using Firefox, Safari, or another browser that Wal-Mart Video Downloads doesn't currently support. Click here to get Internet Explorer for free from Microsoft.