[78-L] Blockbuster dying??

[fnarf at comcast.net]

Blockbuster can't possibly compete against "The Long Tail" that a service like Netflix or Bittorrent offers. That's the untold thousands or even millions of programs that a limited store like Blockbuster can't possibly offer, none of which gets rented very much but which taken as a whole add up to the majority of rentals. Blockbuster's selection is terrible unless you like, well, blockbusters. And their corporate policies, like all corporate retail policies, are geared entirely towards homogenization and uniformity, not meeting local needs.

Blockbuster stores are also, as Darrell points out, really crappy, with the kind of fast-food mentality that discourages thought or consideration in its employees. Expecting Blockbuster employees to know anything about movies is like expecting Burger King employees to be able to discourse at length on the differences between Gevrey-Chambertin and Mercurey wines.

We here in Seattle are spoiled, because we have Scarecrow Video, which is pretty much unanimously agreed to be the best video rental store in the world, with thousands of rare items (including lots of VHS that's never made it to DVD) unavailable literally anywhere else. Many of their items carry a several-hundred-dollar deposit as a result; if you wreck it, there is no replacement. They carry stuff from every region code, which no other store I've seen does. 

But even they are under threat from Bittorrent, where virtually anything you've ever heard of can be available, often in less time than it takes to drive to a video store (if you have a fast connection). Movie companies, like record companies, are stupid, and will probably never get the point, which is EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME. They keep nattering on about "piracy" when they refuse to make the content available in any format at any price. I use Bittorrent when I want to watch something for which I would gladly pay a premium, except that no one offers it for sale or rent. 

Try buying a legal copy of "Charlie Bubbles" with Albert Finney, Billie Whitelaw, and a very young Liza Minelli in the US. It's not possible. It was only released on Region 2 last year, after forty years of not being available on any format anywhere ever unless you caught a rare TV showing.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Darrell Lehman" <nickjay at worldnet.att.net>
To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2009 1:13:39 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Re: [78-L] Blockbuster dying??

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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>   
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