JimRochester

I think there are still 2 in the Rochester area but none close enough to bother with. They are at least 25 minutes away. I'm doing Family Video now and that seems superb, at least through week one.

EddieMoney

Did you get the half off deal for your first month of rentals?

JimRochester

Yes. Unlimited half price rentals for the first 30 days. Unfortunately this is premiere week so I won't be able to take great advantage of it. I should have started in July.

My Other Self

They're done.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/06/news...tores-closing/

All remaining stores (except for franchised locations) and Blockbuster by Mail will no longer operate past January 2014.

RobLutter

Longest death knell ever.

Alan Smithee

Best news I've heard all week! See kids, sometimes the bad guys DO end up getting what they had coming to them! Think I'll celebrate by watching "Showgirls"!

Alan Smithee

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/92S-S9vJ0PA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Someday, you'll remember where you were when you first heard Blockbuster had died. "It's so beautiful!"

JimRochester

It was a great PR move, too bad it backfired. I forget the exact % but a good deal of revenue from derived from late fees. Then when people had no late fees to fear, they kept movies which made store inventories poorer.

I for one never had the hate for BB that many on the board did. In fact BB online was fantastic up until a year ago. At one point I was banging out 12 - 14 movies a week when people at Netflix were being throttled. They often had some good PVD sales as well.

Alan Smithee

I hated them mainly because of their ban on NC-17 rated movies. It's one thing to not carry porn, but the NC-17 rating tried to let legitimate movies have more adult content and Blockbuster squashed that right away by saying "We're still not going to carry these."

Even disregarding that, they could have re-invented themselves in the past few years but they didn't even try. They could have tried to fill in for Tower and Borders by having more movies for SALE, which if competitively priced could have supported at least one store in every area, but they kept focusing on rentals which I haven't done since 1998, and I don't buy used either!

The ideal way this ends: Scarecrow Video takes over all remaining Blockbuster stores!

JimRochester

Absolutely. Companies need to reinvent and keep up with the times. At one point they did have quite a selection of new titles for sale however they weren't very competitively priced. Always $5 more than Best Buy. I was told they would price match but I never tried.

I can see the fear of the NC-17 movies being irrational, I guess I just didn't realize there were that many of them

I can't say enough about the BB by mail and in-store exchange program. They serviced it to the max. Movies came and went so fast I had to burn them to keep up.

I still rent everything. I don't buy anything unless I've seen it. Used is great. When they had the 5 for $20 I picked up quite a few great titles including the Toy Story set. The key is look at the disc before you leave the store. You can generally see bad discs right up front. The biggest drawback was many stores tossed the BR cases so you had to get your own, which I still have a supply of. I'll have to run to the last store in town and get some to use them up

Alan Smithee

There weren't, because many studios decided they just wouldn't release movies with that rating since Blockbuster wasn't going to carry them- they had that much pull then since they had such a big share of the video market. Instead studios required any movie that initially got that rating to be cut until it got at least an R, and eventually they got the bright idea of putting out "Unrated" versions on video later. Funny thing is Blockbuster ended up carrying a lot of those, which technically didn't violate their policy since they weren't rated, even though they might have still been NC-17 if they had been!

Spottedfeather

Though it's been 13 years since I've been in a Blockbuster, I'll really miss them. I remember reserving a copy of Tremors 2 when I was 15 and having to get my mom to come in since I wasn't old enough at the time.

Alan Smithee

I remember a cool local video store renting porn to my friend when he was 15.

The Valeyard

Glad to see this piece of shit company finally go the way of the Dodo.

Seriously. Fuck Blockbuster.

IamLegend

Blockbuster to close U.S. retail stores, mail DVD operation

Roger Yu, USA TODAY 6:29 p.m. EST November 6, 2013




AP Dish Blockbuster Store Closings

(Photo: Scott Anderson AP)

Story Highlights
Stores will close by early January next year
Mail DVD operation to close by mid-December
Parent company Dish Network hopes to "leverage the brand"


SHARE 2829 CONNECT 207 TWEET 31 COMMENTEMAILMORE

It's the last picture show for Blockbuster.

The retail company that introduced millions of Americans to stay-home movie nights said Wednesday it will close its 300 remaining U.S. stores by early January next year. Its DVD-by-mail business, introduced as a competitor to Netflix, also will be shut down by mid-December.

"This is not an easy decision, yet consumer demand is clearly moving to digital distribution of video entertainment," said Joseph Clayton, CEO of Dish Network, Blockbuster's parent company. "Despite our closing of the physical distribution elements of the business, we continue to see value in the Blockbuster brand, and we expect to leverage that brand as we continue to expand our digital offerings."

Dish Network, which offers satellite pay-TV service, said it will retain licensing rights to the Blockbuster brand and, for now, its vast video library.

"Blockbuster has no brand," said Dan Rayburn, an analyst at StreamingMedia.com. "Consumers stopped thinking about the brand a long time ago. Why did they take so long to close?"

Dish plans to focus on its Blockbuster @Home business, a streaming service available to Dish pay-TV customers for an extra fee.

Blockbuster On Demand, its streaming service for the general public, also will continue to operate. "The quantity of movies (for Blockbuster On Demand) is so limited," Rayburn said. "Some of them are not even on (high-definition). It's not even a real service. You can't put it up there with Vudu or Netflix or Hulu."

Dish Network bought Blockbuster in April, 2011 in an auction for $320 million as Blockbuster was emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Dish's plan at the time was to leverage its more than 1,700 store locations to offer in-store rentals that would complement Dish's other video offerings. "Cross-marketing and service-extension opportunities" were mentioned by Dish.

But competitive pressures and adapting to the rapidly changing streaming technology proved to be too daunting for Blockbuster's management, as video lovers continue to flock to Netflix, YouTube and other start-up streaming sites. Cheaper kiosk rental locations, such as Redbox, undercut its prices.

Dish continued to close stores throughout the country. Its rental library was cut in half in the last year, down to 41.5 million units of DVDs and games as of June from 81.9 million a year earlier.

Blockbuster's revenue fell to $120 million in the second quarter, less than half the $253.3 million it generated in the year-ago period.

"It's an interesting footnote to business history. (Dish) thought (Blockbuster) had a longer tail than it did. But digital distribution happened faster than people may have thought," said Matthew Harrigan, a media analyst at Wunderlich Securities.

BuckNaked2k

I always thought the same thing. After Borders and Circuit City closed, Best Buy was the only place to buy Blu-rays in my town, (although B&N was always there with their everyday MSRP pricing).

I just imagined a Blockbuster-sized store stacked floor to ceiling with every genre of movies, on DVD and Blu-ray. They could have had killer niche sections for foreign films, Anime, Slasher, et al, but they never saw the opportunity.

BuckNaked2k

Seriously? Why?? Nobody ever forced you to rent there. The store met the needs of some until, ultimately, the free-market decided its fate.

I've never understood some peoples' hate for certain companies. Don't like it? Go somewhere else.

The Valeyard

Ahem. It's personal and has nothing to do with their rental policy (shitty as it was).

I worked at Blockbuster for about 3 years and eventually became an Assistant Manager before deciding to quit. I had never worked for a company that treated their employees as terribly as Blockbuster did. I worked at a corporate store and, once I became Assistant Manager, was told to keep tabs on employees who had been there for awhile and keep an eye out for fireable offenses to get rid of them. Preferably the ones who had earned vacation time or were next up for a raise. Find any reason to get rid of them.

In my 3ish years there, I watched our store lose 3 Managers and 2 Assistant Managers because the Regional Manager decided they had risen far enough in the ranks and it was time to go. Missing boxes and items were unfairly blamed on kids and out they went. There was a lot of shit going on that was pretty much condoned by Corporate or at least by the Regional office. I left because I hated they way they treated people and knew that sooner or later, my time would be up anyways.

I didn't like it so yes, I did go somewhere else.

Fuck Blockbuster. Fuck it right up the ass.

BuckNaked2k

^ Well that's a 'whole nother' story.

Alan Smithee

Not surprised at all by that story. I'm sorry the site ihateblockbuster.com ended before the company did, there were some great stories from people who worked there.

Except most of the time you COULDN'T go somewhere else, because Blockbuster put so many smaller stores out of business as the sheep all flocked to them. Though I never saw this myself, I heard stories where they'd open real close to independent video stores, undercut their prices, and then raise them after the indie stores went under. I remember when they were pushing the studios to rental-price DVDs the same way they had been with VHS tapes- basically telling them "Price all your new releases at $100 so consumers can't buy them and smaller stores will have to pay more for them, but keep giving us the deals you've been giving us all along so it won't really hurt us, OK?"

Given the state of retailers these days I would have liked to have seen them change and least attempt to stay around, but they didn't even try. I remember a few years ago I got a Blockbuster gift card, and I went to every store in the region trying to find something to buy with it. Most stores had a small selection of Blu-Rays for sale, but they wasted so much store space with "As Seen on TV" products like kitchen gadgets. They were being paid to carry that stuff, but seriously, carry less movies in a VIDEO STORE to make room for THAT crap?

beesonosu

Obviously digital distribution/streaming is going to continue to grow, but as others have said Blockbuster's problems ran much, much deeper. The CEO of Dish spins it a bit, in my opinion, as his company is obviously profiting more off of digital renting.

I think a lot of it had to do with them trying to appease stock holders and getting into too many long-term, price-locked leasing contracts. Part of customer service is making sure that there are titles available to rent. I've even noticed a slight drop in Red Boxes in my area.

Gizmo

Finally.

Surprised Dish held into the stores his long.

Numanoid

I was an Asst. Mgr. of a Blockbuster in 1990, the heyday of video rentals. They weren't a horrible company, but they were corporatized to the level of stupidity.

For instance, they had a rule that you had to greet every customer as they walked in, even if you were in the back of the floor and barely visible. Always had to say "Hello!" when someone walked in. One day, about 5 minutes after opening, and working alone, I was out in the parking lot emptying the drive-up drop-off bin. While I was out there, our regional managers showed up to the store to meet my manager for a meeting. They saw me at the drop box and we said good morning and exchanged a few pleasantries. I went inside and started cleaning.

They all came in about 5 minutes later and went to the offices in the back. Later that day I got called in to the manager's office and scolded for not greeting them when they walked in. Yep, even though we had an entire conversation in front of the store, and the fact that I recognized them as employees and not customers, I was still at fault for not following the policy to the letter. I hate that robotic adherence to policy that seems to rob people of their common sense. It still pisses me off to this day.

Alan Smithee

There's a joke going around people looking for rare stuff on VHS about how many times they run into Jerry Maguire- some stores that sell used VHS's have literally hundreds of copies of that movie. The website everythingisterrible.com even has a mass Jerry Maguire VHS collection with lots of ridiculous pictures of people in bathtubs filled with Jerry Maguire tapes and stuff like that. Probable reason for this is when it was coming out, Blockbuster employees had to ask EVERY customer if they wanted to pre-order it, and if they didn't ask they'd be fired.

Til the end I heard they had ridiculous requirements for their employees to say Hi to customers and stuff like that. They obviously didn't require much knowledge of movies though- one joke I read today is at a real video store if you asked the clerk to recommend something they'd suggest some obscure movie you probably hadn't heard of. If you did that at Blockbuster, they'd say "Anything with Bruce Willis!"

Josh-da-man

As a customer, I fucking HATE that shit. It's a real turn-off and makes me think poorly of your store when you force your employees to badger me for shit I have no interest in. Would you like to apply for a our store Mastercard? Do you have a Target Red Card? Would you like to join our loyalty program? Have you heard about this new book?