[78-L] Blockbuster dying??

[Darrell Lehman]

The two stores I used to "shop" at were staffed by morons with obnoxious 
personalitys (if one could call what they had a "personality") and had 
very uncooperative management.  I discovered a couple "local" stores 
that had everything I wanted with pleasant, knowledgeable employees. 

There may be some economic/cultural issues involved but perhaps poor 
environment played a part... ?  They're getting what they deserve - no 
loss in my book!

======================================================
Michael Biel wrote:
> 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  
>
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