Top 2009 movie rentals for Ballardites

Geeky Swedes Ballard

It seems that Ballard loves Milk. At least that was the top-rented Netflix movie in the 98107 and 98117 zip codes last year.

The New York Times took data from Netflix and created these maps by city and broke them down by zip. (Thanks to The Big Blog for catching this.)

  • The top movies in the 98107 were:

    • Milk
    Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    Rachel Getting Married
    The Wrestler
    Slumdog Millionaire

  • The top movies in the 98117 were:

    • Milk
    Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    Slumdog Millionaire
    Doubt
    Burn After Reading

    Geeky Swedes

    The founders of My Ballard

    5 thoughts to “Top 2009 movie rentals for Ballardites”

    1. what about those of us that dont use netflix?

      lots of people I know get their movies from the library.

      I think that skews this distribution map somewhat.

      btw, benjamin button was one BAD movie

    2. The data is similar to that of our video stores. I should mention that most of the top renters here were released early in 2009, which means they had most of the year to amass “turns” for this annualized sample. That can skew data somewhat; for example, UP (released later in the year) would easily be among the top renters on this list if hadn't been released so late in the year. In the vid biz, we look at how a movie rents over a 6-month period to compare performance. Another factor that creates a “big renter” is low box office combined with critical acclaim. Milk, Button, Rachel, Wrestler all had these factors.

      My friends with stores in the suburbs and others out in rural America were fascinated by this glimpse at rental demographics. Exec summary: “Smart” movies rent big in city neighborhoods, while violent movies and silly rom-coms do much better out in the hinterlands.

    4. I should qualify that “silly” descriptor. There are rom-coms that are quite good — it's the popularity of the vapid ones that shoots way up out there.

    5. We get some DVDs from the library, some from Netflix and some from Rain City. However, it's probably a REAL safe bet that the number of films rented through Netflix VASTLY exceeds the number borrowed from the library. In fact, I'd bet good money that number of DVDs borrowed from the library wouldn't even add up enough to be a rounding error for Netflix.

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