Those of you not living under rocks have probably seen one of the many Mark-Cuban-will-shatter-windows pieces that are floating around everywhere in the press these days. But over at Slate magazine, Edward Jay Epstein has an interesting take on the entire situation:

What has prevented the studios from closing the video window is simple: Wal-Mart. The company, which is the single biggest seller of DVDs, has made it clear that it does not want to compete with home delivery. Wal-Mart executives told Viacom’s home entertainment division in no uncertain terms that if any studio does away with the 45-day video window for a single title, they would risk losing access to Wal-Mart’s shelf space for all of its titles. Wal-Mart provided studios with more than one-third of their U.S. DVD revenue in 2004. In the face of Wal-Mart’s retail power, the studios have not dared (yet) to do away with the protective video window.

We here at BBB would normally give Mark a friendly slap on the back but we have some doubts. While this “Mark Cuban will save us from Big Studio Intransigence” is a catchy narrative, nothing has been said about Cuban’s own “no-window\” releases. Was there an amazing financial windfall as predicted by all these breathless hucksters? We don’t think the studios would hesitate for a second to start shattering their own windows if Cuban’s experiments were going well. Curiously, everyone has been silent on the cold-hard-cash front, choosing instead to pontificate on more conceptual matters.

Wal-Mart and the big studios are easy to villify but we don’t think even the power of Wal-Mart could keep studios from chasing after bigger profits. Something in Epstein’s math just doesn’t add up.