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Blockbuster To Close Remaining US Locations
UnknowingFool writes "Blockbuster announced that it will close its remaining 300 U.S. locations by January and discontinue the DVD by mail service. Before being bought out by Dish, the chain was slowly closing locations. Dish's CEO said, 'This is not an easy decision, yet consumer demand is clearly moving to digital distribution of video entertainment.' From an all-time high of 9,000 locations in 2004, the chain has fallen on hard times and had emerged from bankruptcy in 2011."
Dish's CEO said, 'This is not an easy decision, yet consumer demand is clearly moving to digital distribution of video entertainment.'
Oh, sure, blame it all on the consumers!
Let's be realistic here: Yes, increasing consumer demand for instant gratification is part of the video stores downfall, but they're experiencing an equal amount of pressure from the content cartels, who have spent years trying inadvertently (or intentionally) to kill off the rental industry with their obsession over controlling how consumers can access media.
Content cartels... like Dish Network.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
My sister still likes going to the store and browsing.
"Digital delivery" for which the market has spoken does not work in combination with crappy (monopolistic and sometimes transfer-capped) internet.
Having a near-by rental store had its benefits.
I always find it difficult to understand the mentality of those cheering and saying good riddance that a long time business [even former giants of the industry] has failed.
Hey, it could be your workplace next.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
A large segment of the market is not watching their movies on the TV in the living room, or any other room for that matter. There is a huge generational shift to kids watching movies on a computer or tablet.
The problem is that the selection on Netflix sucks balls. And I say that as someone who has had their streaming service from day one. Netflix streaming is great when you're content to watch whatever they happen to have at the moment (mostly older stuff). It sucks when you want to watch a specific movie.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Think Rural. Get out in the sticks where your max internet speed is still 56k (and that's most of the country) and DVDs suddenly become useful again. I have a feeling that people in the Dakotas, Oregon, Washington state, etc... are going to be irritated the most by this.
In the 'sticks' you press the 'on-demand' button on your DirectTV remote..
It would be easy to say that Netflix killed Blockbuster, and certainly Blockbuster inflicted harm on themselves. Netflix did play a part but Blockbuster's problems come from a business model that came under threat from multiple fronts. [..] Even at the same price of a Blockbuster rental, [VOD] consumers didn't have to physically get and return the title.
This is true, but there's one important factor everyone missed (and I overlooked myself in the past until someone mentioned it)- the falling cost of DVDs over the past decade has often made it barely cheaper to rent instead of buy. With box sets, it's usually a no brainer- the equivalent cost of each disc is frequently below what most places would bother charging for rental.
To be fair, this is less the case for the new-release blockbuster DVDs which Blockbuster specialise in (apparently, I'm never in there myself), as those tend to be still quite expensive when new. Even so, nowdays it's surprising how fast the retail price falls after this.
Prerecorded videotapes were apparently massively expensive in the late 70s and early 80s, and even when prices on retail tapes had fallen it still made sense to rent if you were only going to watch it once. Nowadays? Not so much, if at all.
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