Are Gays Driving the Tremendous DVD Sales for HBO’s True Blood?

I don't know about the premise but the article has some interesting information..

It’s Not TV, It’s GAY-ch-B-O?

I’m sure this is definitely a somewhat old theory and old thinking for anyone who began watching True Blood when it debuted last September. But I just started watching last week, so I was late to the game.

For weeks now, I’ve been marveling at the DVD sales for HBO’s True Blood. It’s sold more units and made more revenue than any other TV show this year. The accomplishment is pretty phenomenal, and I’m going to hit you with quite a few numbers to showcase just how phenomenal it is before furthering the speculation on why it has performed so phenomenally. If you’re not interested in the numeric comparisons, skip down to “Why is it selling so well?” section below.

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A Comparative Look at Recent TV Show DVD Sales:

In six weeks of release it has sold almost 1.2 million units and grossed almost $41 million in revenue. It’s closest competition in 2009 so far this year comes from 24 season seven, which has also been available for six weeks but has sold less than 600,000 units and grossed just over $19 million. On a revenue basis, True Blood is the only DVD for the year in the top 20, top 30 or top 40 of DVD sales (it is currently 16th through the week ending June 28). 24 season seven is 46th by revenue.

To compare to some of its cable brethren, in four weeks of release Weeds season four (admittedly, not its best effort) had sold 432,000 DVDs and grossed almost $11 million.

Some will say it’s not fair to compare this year’s numbers because most of the 2008-2009 TV seasons have not yet been made available on DVD. That’s true, but it doesn’t matter. We can compare to the full calendar year of 2008 DVD sales when with about 17 weeks of sales (released on 9/2/08) The Office season four was the number one TV show DVD for the year selling 1.06 million units and grossing over $32 million. Because of the way we see data it’s not easy (or even usually possible) to see combined sales across multiple calendar years, but a show like Lost’s season four which went on sale with only a few weeks left in 2008 tracked closely with, but not quite as well as True Blood. After five weeks in release, Lost season four had sold over 976,000 units and grossed over $36 million. After five weeks, True Blood had sold almost 1.1 million DVDs and grossed almost $38 million in revenue.

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