[78-L] Blockbuster dying??

[David Lennick]

Remember when Betamax was almost a generic term? A Rhino track even had a 
reference to someone named Betamax Horowitz. I didn't get into home video for a 
couple of years and it was when I got to Edmonton in October 1982. There were 
no format wars out there..everything was VHS except for one cult store which 
carried only Beta. Tapes rented for $4 a night at several locations around 
town. Videodiscs (CED) were still around, for rent at a lot more mom 'n' pop 
locations (and gas stations!) than tapes, and were available for free at the 
public libraries. If you wanted a PLAYER, that was a bit more 
difficult..usually a $10 per day rental.

My first VCR, a rental, had a remote control..a pause button on a long cord.

dl

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  
>