e Entertainment
After years of being THE place to go for your movie viewing fun, Blockbuster has announced that it is closing its doors for good. OK, it took them years of denial to realize that nobody rents videotapes or DVDs anymore and that their business model is useless, but at least they’ve finally accepted what we’ve all known since the turn of this century.
In its heyday, Blockbuster boasted of 9000 video stores nationwide. Now, all that remains are a measly 300 stores and the Blockbuster DVD-By-Mail business, all of which will shutter in January of 2014.
Just like 8-Track tapes before it, the times — and technology — they are a changin’. With the ability to stream virtually any movie you want directly into your home at the push of a button, who needs to drive to a local brick and mortar store, rent a movie, then return it in time or risk a hefty late fee? Nobody, that’s who! Blockbuster also failed to take businesses like Netflix seriously, while opting not to switch to a streaming business model itself. By the time it realized its mistake, it was too late.
e Entertainment
And so, we say goodbye to Blockbuster Video — the same way we said goodbye to the rotary dial telephone, the cassette tape boom box and The Star Spangled Banner that was played when television stations used to all go off the air around 1am.
Blockbuster Video?? Even the ancient name says it all! RIP.
Block Buster is no big loss. It was too expensive as a video store which is another reason it stopped making money as a video store. And it refused to get with the times. I tried to rent a movie from them online only to be told they only allowed people who were dish network customers to rent movies. This was a couple of years ago but it completely stopped me from trying to do anything with them.
I agree with you, Block Buster could have survived but they didn't make any of the necessary changes quickly enough.