A nice profile of Kevin Tsujihara, the relatively-new head of Warner Bros.’ Home Entertainment Division, the person responsible for all of Warner’s digital media efforts, including recent deals with BitTorrent in U.S., Free Record Shop in Netherlands, In2Movies in Germany, and of course, the studios-owned Movielink.
The story is critical of the newly launched download-to-own service from Movielink, and Kevin himself is not that happy: “Trying to get five competitors to agree on anything, even when to meet, is tough,” he says. The lesson: “Let’s not wait to try to build a consensus.”
And then, this interesting bit: “Warner Bros.’ tech brains are helping Wal-Mart build out its website to sell digital movie downloads. And Tsujihara is also taking the oft-discussed idea of video kiosks that burn DVDs and working with a technology company - it’s rumored to be HP - to try to get them in stores...The idea is that retailers could save valuable shelf space by stocking only the most recent releases, yet offer all 6,600 Warner Bros. titles, compared with the 400 they might typically stock. Once they have a prototype, they’ll start recruiting other studios, and Tsujihara hopes to have a limited rollout to stores in 2007.”