Philobiblon

The weekend’s Guardian reports that “English newspapers gave away 54m DVDs in the first quarter of this year, roughly as many as were bought in the shops”. The best estimate I’ve seen is that each new reader so attracted (often for that one week only) costs the papers several pounds. And of course most of those DVDs will sooner or later – and probably sooner, end up clogging the nation’s landfills. How long before a DVD rots back into the earth? I dread to think.