[78-L] Blockbuster dying??

[Michael Biel]

Just heard a news story that Blockbusters might close as many as 960
stores.  YIKES!  Now, I have NEVER EVER rented a videotape or DVD from
any store -- I buy tapes and discs and subscribe to the movie channels
-- so I have never been a part of the rental craze, but it is another
bit of fallout of not only the economy but the change in software
habits.   

When the Beta and VHS were introduced in the mid-70s I was surprised at
the predictions of rentals because although rentals of 16mm films had
been possible since the 1930s and sale of 8mm condensations were also
commonly available, these had never been anywhere near a mainstream
activity.  Sales of VCRs and establishment of rental stores was fairly
slow even in the early 80s, so I was flabbergasted when I spent the
summer in London in 1983 to discover that the saturation of VCRs in
England was TWICE what it was in the U.S. (something like 25% in the US
and nearly 60% in England) and that there were rental stores everywhere
and every corner chemist also rented tapes.  This didn't happen in the
U.S. at this level for another couple of years.  My theory was that in
England there was only 4 channels of TV and only a couple of movies a
week on the air, while in the U.S. most areas had gotten to a greater
level, and that cable channels were starting to add to the number of
alternate sources.  A video magazine in the U.S. accepted a pair of
articles about British TV from a couple of American tourists who had
been there a year after I was, and their reasoning for the higher
saturation of VCRs in England what that they LOVED their TV so much they
wanted to record things more than Americans!  Quite the opposite -- they
rented far more than they recorded.  The pair had made so many factual
errors about programs I felt that some of the people they talked to were
pulling their legs to see how much bunk they would believe!  The only TV
they had a chance to watch was in the TV room of the bed and breakfast
they stayed at, and their informants were the others staying there. 
They were impressed with a recent movie that was on the air that week,
but I happened to have the Radio Times and TV Times magazines for the
weeks they were there and found that there were only two other movies on
the air that week, and that they didn't understand the difference
between the national networks in England and local stations in the U.S. 


Maybe Netflix, which Steve Ramm has recently been talking about, is
causing the change.  Bit torrent downloads of movies are too difficult
and slow to be making the difference like Napster had done against CDs. 
And by the way, in case you have ever wondered why they don't rent CDs,
the RIAA influenced the passing of a law that outlawed this -- but
videotapes of movies were not included!  

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com