Pioneer Has Ambitions for Madonna Concert Disc

Can Madonna sell laser-disc players as well as she sells herself?

Pioneer Artists, the nation’s leading distributor of music-related laser discs, hopes so.

In a move virtually unprecedented in the video industry, Pioneer has just released Madonna’s “Blond Ambition World Tour Live” exclusively on laser disc.

Normally, video packages of this nature are released on videocassette two to six weeks before they are released on laser disc. In this case, however, “Blond Ambition” won’t be released on videocassette for at least a year.

Steven Galloway, president of Pioneer Artists, said he hopes the fact that an artist of Madonna’s stature would release a video only on laser disc will send a signal to millions of potential laser customers that the new format has finally come of age.

Because laser discs offer substantially better picture and sound quality than videocassettes, there have been predictions for years that laser discs will eventually capture a large share of the prerecorded video market, much the way that its sister format the compact disc has become a major force in the album market. But it hasn’t happened yet.

Though the price of laser players has fallen dramatically in recent years (now less than $400 in some combination models that play CDs and lasers), there are still fewer than 500,000 players in homes around the country--a statistic that has left laser manufacturers understandably frustrated.

One reason for the public’s slowness to move into laser-disc players is that, unlike videocassette machines, you cannot yet make your own laser recordings with home laser equipment. Still, it is so much more fun to watch a movie or music program, such as “Blond Ambition,” on laser disc that almost everyone exposed to the format becomes a salesperson for it.

In most cases, these converts hold on to their VCRs to record programs off television the same way pop fans keep their tape decks for specialized uses even after they’ve begun buying most of their new albums on compact discs.

Galloway said that the laser exclusive with Madonna grew out of an agreement last spring for Pioneer, the electronics hardware and software giant, to sponsor her tour.

“I contacted her manager, Freddy DeMann, long before the tour started in hopes of getting the laser-disc rights to any video that was going to be shot in association with the tour,” Galloway said. DeMann was meeting with potential corporate sponsors at the time, Galloway said, and he asked if Pioneer would be interested in sponsoring the tour. The company apparently jumped at the opportunity.

“Madonna is the ideal artist to reach the new demographics that we are hoping to attract with the new, low-priced combination CD and laser players . . . the young, hip 18-35 audience,” Galloway said.

“Until these low-priced players arrived, laser discs were considered something just for the high-end market . . . a rich man’s toy. But that has changed and Madonna seemed the ideal artist to drive that point home.”

And what about the “Blond Ambition” package itself?

The video is based on the same concert in Nice that HBO broadcast live last summer, but the new, edited laser version offers much more of the vitality and charm of the show itself than the HBO special.

At just $29.95 for a two-hour concert program, the laser disc is also a much better buy than the five-minute “Justify My Love,” the much-ado-about-nothing video single that sells for $9.98.

It’s still hard to believe that a program as distinguished as “Nightline” would devote an entire half-hour to showing the video and asking Madonna the same question 22 different ways: “Haven’t you finally gone too far?”

There’s nothing in “Blond Ambition” that is likely to earn the singer a return appearance on “Nightline”--though it is interesting to see how the mock masturbation sequence during “Like a Virgin” appears to have been a model for the bedroom fantasies outlined in “Justify My Love.”

What “Blond Ambition” does, however, is show that Madonna isn’t just a masterful pop strategist. She’s also someone with considerable imagination and talent. She’s not a great singer or writer, but she infuses her music and her concerts with a sense of personality, spirit and, yes, ideas.

A few of the sequences in “Blond Ambition” are silly and self-conscious, but most are witty and engaging, making it an especially winning package.