FYI
quote:
Originally posted by Hollydays:
—Okay, I’ll bite, Aleck what’s this about Canadian Disks??
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Oh, man, it’s fun is what it is. Okay, LEXX (from Season 2 upward) is distributed in the States by Acorn Media. It’s distributed in Canada by Koch (who also put out the Season 1 films). The Koch releases, except for some cover artwork changes, are identical to the US releases, with both Acorn and Koch sharing some of the production costs. Basically, we at Acorn put the discs together, and Koch puts them out across the border. Because of these territorial rights questions, no retailer is supposed to sell to customers across the border from the company. Anyway, both companies set the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price at what would be about average for a small-company release in their respective markets ($29.99 in both Canada and US). However, with discounts, it’s cheaper than that through several online locations. And with the Canadian/US dollar conversion, it comes out even cheaper for US customers to try and buy the Canadian releases (though there are places in the US that sell it cheaper than most CA locations, even taking into account the exchange rate). However, no Canadian retailer is supposed to sell the product across the border (and most will cancel the order if you try to do it anyway). Because of this, when the first discs were coming out on both sides of the border, I had told people repeatedly that since Acorn was putting the discs together, that for Season 3 to be even considered, sales would have to be fairly good in the States. And since it was illegal for the CA discs to be sold in the US *anyway*, that US residents should be buying them from US retailers, so that the figures would accurately reflect what was being sold, and so the higher-ups would continue to consider doing S3 (and so the rights wouldn’t end up in the hands of people who didn’t care about the show, like in the Paramount case with the LEXX films in the US). And people just got *incredibly* upset about that. Well, they did on the scifi.com and lexx.com boards, at least. And some brainiac (who shall remain nameless) just recently said something about how I’m the kind of guy that would sue people for trying to buy the Canadian discs.
It’s a long and complicated story, and I’m tired, so I may not be making any sense, but that’s as close as I can get to what the deal is right now.
–Aleck