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Peter Staddon - January 18th, 2002
My, how you've grown
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your job?
Well my official title is Senior Vice President of marketing, which is a very grand title for what I do.
I’m basically responsible for all product development of DVDs and video releases that Fox put out, and their marketing in America. I’ve been with Fox about four years now, so I’ve seen DVD developments grow from a relatively small part of my position to a very large and important part as the DVD market has grown.
One of the fastest growing areas of our DVD business is TV properties on DVD, which has been a real boon for us and for the fans of TV properties like Buffy.
Why, why, why?
What would you say to fans outside America - who probably have all the VHSs - about buying the DVDs too?
Well, obviously you’ve got the quality of DVD which is the first and foremost thing in terms of audio and video. Tapes degrade over time - if somebody is a die hard fan of the series they’ll want to get it in what is basically an archivable format.
Then the other benefit of DVD is the added features that you can put on, that you couldn’t put on to VHS tapes. Things like the commentaries and the extra material that we put on DVDs. The talent involved in the production of the shows wouldn’t really be interested in doing [those] for a VHS release. DVD has changed the way they perceive the home entertainment market.
Then the other thing is that you can have the entire season in a box as opposed to a 'best of', or a themed series, or "Here’s six tapes of the 12 shows of a season which had 24 shows in it" - it’s incomplete.
There’s something nice and complete about having it [all]. I’ve got the entire season one Buffy in front of me in a box that’s less than an inch thick, that takes up hardly any shelf space compared to the same thing on VHS [which] would take up nearly a foot. So there’s a number of reasons. I’m a big fan of the DVD format.
The late show
We've had season one on DVD in the UK for a while now. Why were the US region one discs delayed for so long?
It’s not just Buffy, it’s something that we deal with on all our TV shows in the US.
When a network creates a TV show, the normal path for that property to create revenue is for it to have its run on network television, and then they’d sell it into syndication and then it would be released to home video.
In most instances, people are unwilling, or they don’t like the idea of releasing a complete season of a show on DVD or into the home entertainment market before they’ve sold it into syndication. So there was an issue with Buffy that season one hadn’t gone into syndication yet and we had to wait until they’d sold that into syndication before releasing it on DVD.
But now we’ve got the first season out, we’re hoping to follow with seasons two, three, four in more of a timely manner.
Extra Special
Who oversaw the extras for the DVDs and how were they produced?
It's a combination of everything. When we start a new project, the first thing we do is talk to the people who created the material initially.
So we’d meet with Joss Whedon and his team, and say, "Is there anything particularly you’d like to do, or what material is available, or who would be interested, from a cast point of view, in participating."
Once we’ve got that framework established, then we see how much space we’re going to have on the disk. So if we’re going to have a three or four disk release, how much additional space are we going to have to put material on without impacting on the quality of the video.
Then you have to look at who the core fans of the series are, what they like about the series, and how can we make the DVD release tie into that.
[If] you just thought, "Well, I’m going to put an HBO special on the making of Buffy on that" it wouldn’t really be as interesting to the core Buffy fans as seeing Joss Whedon talk about it, seeing the cast and crew talk about how their characters develop and how the story arc develops.
Those type of interviews give people a little bit more of the feeling that not only have they seen the show and they’re a fan, but they’ve got something other people don’t have, they’ve got something special by getting the DVD.
Digital Differences
The region one release has some additional interviews not present on the region two discs. Were the two created at the same time or not?
They were created at the same time. There are often issues with region one vs region two,three or four, in terms of the number of languages they have to translate into and the number of territories they have to make something available for.
That sometimes limits the amount of material they can put on. There’s a certain amount of room and they have to have everything in four languages, so that obviously bites into the bit space available.
But we try to keep the region one and the rest of the world as close as possible, because we want to market these things globally to the Buffy fan base. We don’t want people in London or Australia or whatever thinking they’ve been disadvantaged versus the US market - that’s just not the case.
Is there anything that might appear on the season two disk that might not already be out there on region two DVDs?
I think it’s going to be 95% the same. There may be a couple of little extra things on there but they’ll be very small.
I don’t have the exact specifics of what they might be right now. The season two disks we’re developing right now are very very similar to the region 2 disks that are already out there.
Pilot still unaired
There was a rumour at one point that the original 20 minute pilot episode of Buffy was going to be on the DVD. Was that ever the case?
No, that was never seriously considered for the season one DVD.
Sometimes the discs have the original network trailers, sometimes not. Why is that?
That would just be a space thing. So for example on season one in the US we did put some trailers on, but we might not put all of them on because we may have twenty minutes space left that we have to fill up. If we put on ten trailers then we’re suddenly down to twelve minutes video space and it’s difficult to add something of any value in that twelve minutes space.
It’s always a question of balancing what material is available and what space is available. We could literally fill up all the spare space on the disk after TV episodes with trailers, from all around the world. It’s quite interesting to see how Buffy is translated into as many languages as it is. It gives some idea of the popularity of the show.
The Pack
Will you go with the book style packaging of the UK release?
The US will probably go with the same type of packaging that we’ve done on season one, and on the X-Files and so on.
So, the one that unfolds?
Yes. I like the season two and three book packaging that they did in the UK market. I thought it was a very clever and very good presentation, but just for cost reasons as much as anything else we’re not doing that in the US.
Seeing the bigger picture
Are we going to be seeing widescreen Buffy and Angel releases any time soon?
If there are NTSC (the American TV format) masters available in widescreen, that’s what we’ll be putting on the DVD.
We’re really big into having the original aspect ratio up there, and giving what the creator intended. If Joss Whedon filmed it in widescreen there’s a reason for that, and that’s what we’ll be passing on to the fans.
Thinking of you
Do you think that the nature of the extras will change for more recent seasons, as the Buffy team become more DVD 'savvy'?
One of the really interesting things on these TV properties, particularly on something like Buffy where it’s been out for a while, [is that] when season one was created, no one was thinking of the DVD.
When they’re filming this year’s series, you bet they’re thinking of the DVD, and if something’s been cut they’re automatically thinking, yeah, that can go on the DVD. Filmmakers and TV producers are thinking of that much, much more than they ever were.
So, I think what you see is that as seasons get up to date, the quality of extras that are on the disks will improve, because people are thinking about it when they’re in production.
Once More, but longer
Is it the intention that the DVDs will include the uncut version of the musical episode?
I think we’ve got to look at music clearance issues, but the intent is to put it out in the long format [although] I can’t give you a 1000% guarantee on that.
As someone who’s a fan of the show, and someone who actually would love to see it out in the long format, we’ll be working very hard to make that happen. It might even come out as one on its own.
Like the X-Files sometimes are? Or is Buffy too story arc-based?
I think a lot of it’s very arc-based and I think one of the benefits of a DVD is getting a season at a time. I just think the musical show is so different and would stand out and stand alone as a strong product, so we may consider that.
But again that’s just me talking off the top of my head. We’d have to make sure Joss and the rest of the team were happy with that idea.
Coming Soon...
What other things should we be looking out for in cult Fox DVDs at the moment?
Well, the X-Files is obviously one that we’ll continue with, we’ve been very happy with them. And with Chris Carter announcing that this is going to be the last season of the X-Files I think at some time we’ll look at doing something special on the X-Files, with all the seasons together, but that’s a little bit off yet.
I’m looking at Millennium to see what sort of interest there would be in that, particularly the first two seasons which were very dark and very moody in character, and I know we were looking at Roswell, but there are some music clearance issues that we have to resolve there which may take a fair amount of time.
We’re just looking at things on a case by case basis. There’s a lot of properties, but also with TV properties sometimes there’s a lot of rights issues which need to be untangled before we can go ahead.
Time up for tape?
Now the DVD has such a foothold, how long do you see VHS staying around?
In the US market, for example, when we released Buffy Season One, we only released on DVD. On X-Files now, we only release those on DVD.
That’s because - and it’s very different between TV properties and films - the fans are now expecting to get a whole season in one package, as opposed to getting a couple of episodes at a time.
Why were the tapes released a couple of episodes at a time in the US?
It’s retail price points that we try to hit. It’s difficult to hit the price point if you’re into four or five tapes. Also we didn’t want to get into the extended recording time tapes, because of the durability of those, we don’t like using the super-thin tape. So there were lots of reasons. We’re now really looking at our TV properties as being a DVD medium.