Fifty years in the past, a plastic brick turned the film enterprise the other way up.
In June 1975, whereas everyone was fixated on the mechanical shark in Jaws, Sony quietly launched an much more spectacular machine: the Betamax LV-1901 — the primary shopper VCR. The large gizmo got here embedded in a Trinitron TV console, weighed almost as a lot as a Pinto and price as a lot, too ($2,495, or $15,000 as we speak). But it surely allow you to do one thing revolutionary: document TV and watch it everytime you wished.
Sony pitched it as a home peace treaty — “the tip of the struggle of the channels” — however The New York Instances dismissed it as a toy for “rich faddists.”
Then George Atkinson arrived on the scene. A projector-rental man with a storefront on Wilshire Boulevard, Atkinson had a hunch. In 1977, he scraped collectively $10,000 to purchase one copy every of the 50 Fox titles accessible on Beta and VHS and supplied to hire them for $10 an evening (plus a $50 annual membership). Inside days, hundreds of shoppers had been signing up at his store, the primary videotape rental retailer on earth.
Sony’s C7 mannequin Betamax, circa 1980.
SSPL/Getty Photographs
Hollywood panicked. Common and Disney sued to have VCRs banned. When that failed, they tried to outlaw renting motion pictures. The battle went to the Supreme Courtroom — which dominated in 1984 that, sure, rewinding was authorized.
By then, Atkinson’s retailer had grown into the 600-location Video Station chain, a part of a booming 15,000-store trade. Studios pivoted. “It’s like getting hooked on chocolate,” Paramount exec Mel Harris advised the Los Angeles Instances in 1987. “The extra you get, the extra you need.”
Then got here DVDs within the U.S. in 1997 and made the growth larger. For some time, dwelling video propped up Hollywood’s backside line and paid for its dangers. “The DVD was an enormous a part of our income stream,” Matt Damon later stated. “When that went away, that modified the kind of motion pictures we might make.”
Press play, America. That is the place binge tradition started.
This story appeared within the June 4 problem of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click here to subscribe.