Wal-mart censors America
Topic Post 4
I am not quite sure how to feel about my latest Wal-mart discovery.
Their Music Content Policy may be old news to many of you, but it is new to me. In case you didn't just read it, I will summarize: Wal-mart will not carry any music with the Parental Advisory Label and they will only carry radio-edit versions of potentially offensive songs. This choice to carry a "family friendly" product mix (Kotler and Armstrong p290) is highly questionable since they still sell guns, tobacco and other not-so-freindly items.
This policy does however extend (to a limited extent) to their DVD selection as well. Wal-mart is one of the few retailers that carries "Dove E-rated" versions of films released by Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema. These versions of the films are cut and dubbed to eliminate nudity, violence and profanity in much the same way as edited-for-TV versions that play on network television.
Also, while I was unable to find it on their website, they are one of the first to sell ClearPlay enabled DVD players that can be programmed to automatically edit out offensive content of regular DVDs on-the-fly using a subscription based service.
Why is it that Wal-mart decided to limit their product selection to what they (and the Dove Foundation) deem "safe" for young ears and eyes? Why are they so interested in pioneering the sale of sanitized entertainment?
I suppose that despite having a rather preachy image, the folks at Dove have made a very good point. Family movies just sell more than R rated features. I don't know whether or not the same is true for music, but if the edited version of 50 cent's the Massacre CD can make it into the top 3 downloads then Wal-mart must be doing something right.
The folks at Wal-mart must assume that since their best customers are familes with two working parents and little time to shop, they must also have less time to spend monitoring what their children are watching and hearing. While I do not really condone Wal-mart (or any other company for that matter) assuming this sort of surrogate parental role, their decision does seem to make good financial sense. They are clearly homing in on the concerns of their most important demographic segment. (p240)
posted by Alex @ 5:32 PM
4 Comments:
an interesting, and potentially risky decision on the part of wal-mart. however, i assume they know their customer well and have determined this will increase their DVD sales. when you mentioned censorship, i was thinking if the recent microsoft issue with its china-based products ... now that is an interesting debate!
I did not know that Wal-Mart had this policy. I do understand that there may be a huge market for these censored items, but it seems odd that they made the decision to carry ONLY these items. Why not give shoppers the option? It seems like they are leaving out a whole segment of their shoppers: single adults. If families and parents are that worried about the content of a particularly racy DVD, they probably won't be trying to buy it at all, censored or not. It seems to me that they may lose DVD sales instead of gaining them... I guess that remains to be seen though.
Lizzie,
It appears the the DVD policy is not clearly defined. From reading through a bunch of other blogs notes about this, it seems that some stores have both and some only one or the other. It may depend on how deep into the bible belt the store is?
Also, I was unable to find any Dove DVDs on their website. The site does not even mention them, so they are not doing a very good job of promoting these items. Perhaps they prefer to keep this low on the radar?
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