The second season of HBO's Flight of the Conchords topped TV show DVDs for the week ending August 9, 2009. Battlestar Galactica's unit sales fell by about 66%, but was still on the list, while Dollhouse, Psych and Robot Chicken fell off the list.
Then there's the amazing story of HBO's True Blood season one DVD sales, which in its 12th week of release, increased over its 11th week. In fact, for the week although BSG sold more units, True Blood had $22,000 or so more sales. It's nearing 1.3 million units and has gone over $44 million in sales.
It was the impressive sales for True Blood's DVD that caught my attention and got me watching the show to begin with. Now I'm all caught up, and have really enjoyed the last few weeks. But as much as I've enjoyed those episodes, I think I'm still more amazed by the show's DVD sales than I am by the show itself. Call it a personal quirk.
On a revenue basis True Blood is now the 11th best selling DVD of the season. The only other TV show in the top 50 is 24, which is now #49 (and falling) with $17.995 million in sales.
US TV Show DVD Sales for Week Ending August 9, 2009:
| Title | Units this week | %Change | Total Units | Sales this week | Total Sales | Weeks in Release |
| Flight of The Conchords: The Complete Second Season | 108,978 | -.-% | 108,978 | $2,123,981 | $2,123,981 | 1 |
| Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.5 | 57,959 | -66.6 | 231,538 | $1,825,129 | $7,353,620 | 2 |
| True Blood: The Complete First Season | 49,570 | 12.3 | 1,270,466 | $1,847,970 | $44,150,954 | 12 |
You can see past weekly lists of TV Show DVD Sales numbers here.
Source: the-numbers.com
I have to get into Flight of the Conchords…it’s impressive that it came in at #1, that should help with renewal and The Emmy’s.
I am so happy True Blood is still doing good numbers . To be honest , at first I stopped watching True Blood because I thought HBO was going to cancel it because of its numbers . But when HBO said they were going to renew the show I started watching it again. And Yes I bought the DVD too. And now HBO said a 3rd season is a sure thing. I really love HBO.
So Dollhouse is flopping on FOX, it’s flopping in DVD sales (where mucho moola can be made), and it’s making a few grand on iTunes….so why was this show renewed again??
At this point I think there are two types of Dollhouse fans.
There are realistic people who know what these numbers mean, but they enjoy the show and want to see what Joss does with the last 13.
And there are whedonesque.com people who won’t look at ratings or DVD numbers or anything. The day after Dollhouse gets canceled, these people will go on the internet to debate whether or not Dollhouse is going to be canceled.
“I don’t believe we know ^anything^ about the future of Dollhouse from the initial DVD sales window.” – The One True b!X
And there’s no point haranguing either type. The one already knows and the other never will.
But still I’ll remind the deniers that 99 percent of the long-term survival scenarios you people laid out for Dollhouse over the last few months leaned heavily on the big-time DVD sales that the Whedon fanbase ALWAYS provides. And all those scenarios are gone now.
So there you go. To the realists, I hope you enjoy the second season. To the deniers, good luck denying the ratings when they start coming in on September 26. To those thinking the Fox Friday night lineup may yet shock the world next month, I present to you this exchange from the Television Critics Association presentation of the show leading off your night, “Brothers” starring former New York Giant defensive end Michael Strahan:
TV CRITIC: The pilot contains, by my count, at least 17 jokes involving Michael Strahan’s gap between his teeth and Mr. Mitchell’s wheelchair, plus at least another five or six jokes about Carl Weathers’ maybe early onset of Alzheimer’s. Is that a pace that you guys hope to keep up in subsequent episodes?
BROTHERS EXECUTIVE PRODUCER DON REO: You’ve got to go with what’s funny.
^(A genuine exchange courtesy of mediaweek.com)^
What are the Top 10 selling TV DVD shows of all time?
I don’t know of a site that lists the best-selling TV DVDs, but in 2007 Planet Earth sold over 2.6 million copies. That’s the highest number for a TV show I could find.
Heroes S1 would also be up there.
Just because the show falls off a website that show the “estimated” (yes, read the fine print: “Precise information on DVD sales is not generally available. Our DVD sales figures are estimates based on studio figures, publicly available data, and private research on retail sales carried out by Nash Information Services. The figures include estimated sales at Wal-Mart and other retailers that do not publicly release sales information.”) sales of the Top 30 DVDs doesn’t mean all hope is lost. The show could be 31st and we wouldn’t even know it. No need to predict the apocalpyse. So the show pushed less than 40K in estimated DVD sales in its second week and didn’t register within the Top 30. Didn’t the last DVD of Mad Men have its glory in the “Top 30″ for a week only too?
yes, and when it fell off the list after only one week, we noted it.
Out of the last 3 years, the bestselling are
Planet Earth, probably $179 mil, though possibly $147 mil
Heroes Season 1, $62 mil
Sopranos Season 6.1, $44.2 mil
True Blood Season 1, $ 44.15 mil
At least based on the #’s that thenumbers gives us.
Thanks Robert! Seriously I know the show has barely a chance to get past the next season, and it isn’t the best thing on the tube, but I’m trying my best to watch True Blood, but for some reason I just like Dollhouse better. Mad Men all my friends are crazy about, I guess I’ll see what it’s all about soon.
Will the Dollhouse DVDs fare any better in the UK when it releases there?
If you look at the weekley archives at the-nubers.com in early 2006, you would see that Grey’s first first and seasons sold around 3 million units and Lost’s season 1 did 2.5 mill. Gilmore Girls early seasons easaly sold 1 mill each and so did Smallville’s.
And lets not forget the behemoths that is Chappel’s Show and Firefly (which like The Notebook one Valentine’s, keeps popping up every now and then).
It’s pure speculation, but I think that Season 9 or 10 of Friends are in the duble digits by now.
SleeperActiveCompass, I don’t know how to do hyperlinks on this board, but here’s an article whedonesque.com linked to. According to these guys, Dollhouse is all the way out of the top 50, not just 30, in its second week.
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/agent-dvd-insider/dvd-sales-and-fate-dollhouse
You should be able to cut-and-paste and see for yourself.
You’re still allowed to like the show. If Mad Men had drawn 500 viewers on Sunday I’d still say, well I think the show is great.
But the audience for the show isn’t there. If it were we’d know by now.
Flight of the Conchords is a very funny show. Planet Earth on Blu ray is spectacular.
officegurl: What if you’re a Whedonite, go to whedonesque.com and still think Dollhouse won’t make it past the 13? Think I can join you in the “Sitting in Judgement of Everyone Else” section?
I’ve tried Flight of the Conchords a few times, it hasn’t quite hooked me yet, but it’s definitely in the “when it’s funny it’s funny” category, the music is really clever and the guys themselves are first-rate.
Not that anyone takes their TV orders from me, but if you haven’t seen Planet Earth in high-definition yet, that’s something you just have to see.
Sorry Natalie, THIS post is about TV SHOW dvds. Box Office Mojo, Slashfilms, and I’m sure dozens of other sites are appropriate for discussing GI Joe. But this site, and this post isn’t the place for it.
P.S. I have nothing against GI Joe, but we focus on TV Shows and in these posts TV Show DVDs. We don’t even talk about Twilight being the #1 DVD of the year because IT’S A MOVIE NOT A TV SHOW
Maybe if one of the actives gets an engagement as a swarthy vampire who works in an advertising firm maybe that’ll generate some buzz. Oh well, I’ll file Dollhouse under I’ll Fly Away and The Torkelsons: Fun while it lasted.
buffywrestling & officegurl – OK, well, what if you’re NOT a Whedonite but you like Dollhouse anyway, and you think it’s do its full 13 episode run and that it’s too early to tell what it’ll do after that though you’re not holding out hope? Huh? Huh? What about that?
SPOILER ALERT FOR DOLLHOUSE! Don’t read past this sentence if you don’t like spoilers!
Happy now?
I’ve seen pics of one of the new Dollhouse episodes, don’t know which one. Ballard and Echo go on an engagement where Echo is supposed to be the new bride of a suspected arms merchant. At some point Ballard for some reason has to trick Echo into calling on the martial arts skills she demonstrated in season one when she kicked his butt.
This concerns me. We’re back to the procedural non-serial episodes like episodes 1-5 of season one? This is not going to help Dollhouse ratings.
I could be reading this wrong. Maybe Ballard is finding a way to use the Dollhouse to take down Dollhouse clients in order to mess up the Dollhouse and/or find out who is over DeWitt in the chain of command. I don’t know.
But if the show continues to just “play Dollhouse” like the early episodes of season one, the ratings will continue to slide badly in my view.