While it's not a comprehensive list, the weekly DVD sales charts from the-numbers.com provide snapshots of which TV show DVDs are hot sellers and an idea of their numbers, typically during their release week and soon afterwards. I'll do this as a test for a few weeks and look at how interesting it is for our readers.
Our first look at the list finds HBO's True Blood leading TV shows with a huge first week of over $17 million in sales for the week ending May 24, 2009, and at #4 overall among all DVD sales. Three other TV shows identified, at least somewhat, with cult followings, 24, WWE:Wrestlemania XXV and Friday Night Lights are also in the top 30 DVD sellers for the week.
US TV Show DVD Sales Chart for Week Ending May 24, 2009
| Rank | Prev. Rank | Title | Units this Week | % Change | Total Units | Sales this Week | Total Sales | Weeks in Release |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | (-) | True Blood: The Complete First Season | 515,877 | -.-% | 515,877 | $17,018,782 | $17,018,782 | 1 |
| 7 | (-) | 24 - Season Seven | 276,661 | -.-% | 276,661 | $9,127,046 | $9,127,046 | 1 |
| 13 | (-) | WWE: Wrestlemania XXV - 25th Anniversary | 107,611 | -.-% | 107,611 | $2,151,144 | $2,151,144 | 1 |
| 16 | (-) | Friday Night Lights - The Third Season | 79,436 | -.-% | 79,436 | $1,508,490 | $1,508,490 | 1 |
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Source: the-numbers.com
So I went into the store to get Weeds season 4 and stumbled across True Blood while looking – so I guess I fall into this statistic, as I bought it after the hype I’ve heard about it. I’m halfway through the first season, and it’s starting to grow on me. It’s a shame I prefer Showtime over HBO, as I won’t be able to join into the second season when it airs next week.
If the estimates for True Blood are anywhere near accurate, there is definitely a story to be told. Those numbers are higher than the estimates for the first week of sales for the second season of Heroes, and MASSIVELY higher than first week sales of shows like Weeds, Dexter, Entourage and Burn Notice (by like 4x-8x!). They are not far behind first week sales for shows like LOST (which is definitely a DVD hit) and more than twice as high than the first week sales of the second part of Season 6 of the Sopranos. because of the way there was a large gap in between airing the first and second half episodes on HBO, the DVD sales were also separated into separate parts.
True Blood > Sopranos in DVD sales is sort of eye-popping especially considering that even though viewer numbers for the Sopranos in season six were waning, it very heavily out-rated True Blood. I know the show has critical acclaim and that vampires are somewhat in style due to Twilight, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if those estimates are too high.
dingo: i know shoowtime has some good shows but my god their movie lineup is one notch below atrocious. my directv keeps offering me free showtime and after a few months i couldn’t take trying to find a movie that was watchable outside of them showing zodiac every night. my friend used to come over and as a game we’d see how many movies we recognized on all 4 or 5 channels. wasn’t that many. on hbo i still like true blood, curb and bill maher. looking forward to hung. grey garden’s was amazing. hbo is about to intro a new batch of shows. i hope they go all out and get crazy like with sex or sopranos.
You’re absolutely right. I was in such a hurry to post this I didn’t really look at the numbers! $17m gross in one week is huge.
We can’t be certain of the-numbers.com estimation methods, but my guess is based on talking to them is that if they’re off, its in a consistent way, so comparing their numbers from one week to another is likely pretty consistent, but their numbers may differ from others.
at least in terms of ranking, it jibes with Nielsen’s Videoscan at #4 (as does 24 at #7)
http://en-us.nielsen.com/rankings/insights/rankings/movies
It seems like there is a *very* good story to tell for HBO here, hopefully someone with better data access (to DVD sales data) will tell it.
How does it compare to The Office? Isn’t The Office one of the top sellers?
Here’s what I got from that site in terms of first week sales,
Top 5
Lost – 474K
The Office – 417K
Heroes – 391K
Grey’s – 225K
Smallville – 212K
So True Blood would be #1
that jibes with my cursory scan, Mike (though I had looked at Lost season 3 which had higher first week sales than than season 4). That’s why I find the numbers for True Blood so remarkable. to the degree that I’m surprised I haven’t seen any stories in the trades about the DVD sales.
This list looks pretty decent for Friday Night Lights, considering it’s a show “nobody” watches
. Hopefully it shows some consistency and turns a good profit for all involved.
I’m amazed at those DVD sales. I tried to watch the first season, but I found the first episode really boring but not bad. I knew there was a lot of hype for the show so I brought myself to watch the second episode, which was more boring than the first. Of course, this is just my opinion and it seems people disagree with me.
I think #16 for Friday Night Lights is pretty low. But 1.5 million isn’t bad at all.
Friday Night Lights is a good show.
Those are shockingly huge numbers for True Blood. I am amazed at how many people buy dvds. I usually rent them or check them out for free at my local library. I have always been curious how many households on average rent a dvd movie from the videostore on Friday or Saturday night.
Where is “Firefly” on this list? Isn’t that the #1 best selling DVD in the galaxy? I hear it sold, like, eleventy billion copies or something.
These numbers delight me, but do not surprise me. I’ve been tracking the bestseller lists on Amazon and Barnes and Nobles, and TB has had the number one spot on both sites for around a month before it was released. Dividing revenue by units sold gives 32.99, which was the pre-order cost on both sites, suggesting a massive back-order of the series. I say let’s see what the second week numbers are this Tuesday. (And yes, I am a fan of the series.)
@Riff Rafferty, LOL LOL LOL!
I was wondering how long until someone did some kind of Firefly comparison!
Drew, my guess is the numbers go down sharply (as they do with most DVDs soon after release), and since the-numbers.com reports (publicly) only the top 30 DVD titles each week, it could go off that list entirely.
Yes, Riff Rafferty, Firefly sold “eleventy billion copies”!! That’s an exact number and everything! That is just one of the many, many reasons that the show could come back soon!
EXTREMELY unlikely True Blood will go off the list entirely at least for another couple of weeks. That would essentially mean that all the demand for the DVDs was pent-up demand. I haven’t seen any cases of that. Caprica debuted with far fewer units sold and still hung around a few weeks (albeit at a lower price point). LOST Season 4 might be a better comparison. Also with lower debut numbers (see Mike’s comment above), it hung around for five weeks.
And it probably should be noted the DVD for Moonlight’s first week was about 1/10th as big as True Blood’s. It bowed with like 55K units and was only on the list for 1 week!
I’ve haunted this site for a while, mostly to see TB’s numbers and the cancel index. I’m just very glad how successful the DVDs are.
(And if anyone is curious, my prediction for the season opener June 14th is 3.2 million, up 0.8 million, or 33%, from the finale. I’m probably too optimistic here, but the series did double its audience over its first season.)
Yeah, we had this huge argument over The Numbers being “real” or not in Nick C’s Firefly thread.
I suppose someone will come in now and say since True Blood’s numbers are from The Numbers the show is actually a failure.
Frankly, it wouldn’t matter if TB’s numbers were really half what The Numbers is reporting, they’d still be very good. Just as Firefly’s numbers are very good. Relative matters here, not precision.