Is Blockbuster going out of business?

[PKerr]

Not sure if this is the right forum BUT..

Is Blockbuster going out of business?

The reason I ask is during my travel to lunch today I saw 2 different people on the side of the road holding signs that said "STORE CLOSING! EVERYTHING MUST GO!! 70% OFF!!!"
And the sign had a Blockbuster logo on top.

The strange thing is, is that the people were on the side of the road about 5 miles apart and no Blockbusters in that area.

WTF?!?

I can't say I'd be sorry for them to go because they ruled the roost and put many of the smaller competitors out of business for many, many years now and I personally haven't rented anything there since...since... well I can't remember when.

Just wondering.

 

[the 4th hanson bro]

We've got the same thing on the way to the kids' school. I went in there last week and the manager told me that Blockbuster is looked at a 10 mile circle on a map, picked the lowest performing stores and is closing them.

Within that circle there were 5 stores and 3 are getting closed.

 

[RoJoHen]

I'd say they're struggling to survive. I've been seeing them closing down stores slowly over the last year or so. With things like Netflix and RedBox, I think it's really only a matter of time.

 

[Mike Farley]

Blockbuster has been in dire financial shape for awhile. They are planning on closing hundreds of stores over the next year or so.

link

 

[John Picard]

Good. Blockbuster can die a nice, painful death. I won't shed a tear when their doors close.

 

[Random_Spock]

Whoa that isn't good. I've noticed that as of late -- heck one of the stores in my local area closed quite awhile ago. They just charge too much -- that's pretty much what I think is killing them in terms of overall business.

 

[broberfett]

Blockbuster makes me think of late fees and rushing some forgotten DVD or video back to the store trying to avoid the fee. So fuck'em. Netflix is great.

 

[RoJoHen]

Blockbuster makes me think of late fees and rushing some forgotten DVD or video back to the store trying to avoid the fee. So fuck'em. Netflix is great.

Agreed. The truth is there are just much better options out there these days. Blockbuster won't survive without some major changes.

 

[Sheep]

Look at their financials on any financial website, unless they pull a major turnaround they'll be completely gone in a few years.

 

[Random_Spock]

Blockbuster makes me think of late fees and rushing some forgotten DVD or video back to the store trying to avoid the fee. So fuck'em. Netflix is great.

Agreed. That's pretty much Blockhead (what a friend and I called them over the years...) in a nutshell.

I tend to rent videos from Family Video myself. Rather out of the way, but less expensive and not so stringent about late fees and all that.

 

[Mr Light]

There's a Blockbuster going out of business near where I live, too. But not the one in my town.

 

[PKerr]

As I said I have no love lost for Blockbuster but I hate to see any business close as that just adds to the current unemployment numbers and without some sort of competition Netflix may ease up on some of their customer friendliness and raise their prices, ya never know.

Same thing happened with Bestbuy when Circuit City bit the dust.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

They're basically been slaughtered by the likes of Netflix--to the extent that BB tried to sue them out of existence! So, yeah, BB is in dire straits these days. Fuck 'em.

 

[bigdaddy]

BB Stores are fucked. They aren't going out of business yet but they will be very soon, within a year.

No one wants to put up with them, I actually applied for a job by those fuckers months ago and they acted like they didn't have a sign up saying "Now hiring".

I like the fact the one closest to me is staying open... for now... but I don't know why. The store next door even has a new "Blockbuster Box" which you can rent movies from like those red boxes.

 

[Daneel]

No one wants to put up with them, I actually applied for a job by those fuckers months ago and they acted like they didn't have a sign up saying "Now hiring".

I hear ya'. I've applied to a couple in the past year, and sometimes they told me, "Oh, we're not actually hiring at this time", despite what the sign in their window said. How annoying.

Regardless, I still rent stuff from them on occasion. But if they really are in such dire straits these days, maybe I should look into this Netflix thing for my future movie-watching needs...

 

[RJDiogenes]

I used to have a Blockbuster more or less next door to me, but it closed a couple of years ago. I miss it. With online services, it's a lot harder to just browse the latest direct-to-DVD B-Movies. You have to have already heard of something before you can rent it.

 

[TemporalFlux]

They're basically been slaughtered by the likes of Netflix--to the extent that BB tried to sue them out of existence!

It's all a little funny really. While Netflix was still struggling through its growing pains, they went to Blockbuster trying to sell out; Blockbuster turned down the deal thinking that the Netflix model would never go anywhere.

http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2005/10/variety_blockbu.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2133995/

Variety has an excellent analysis of the troubles that Blockbuster is facing in the story "Blockbusted!" In the article a former Blockbuster executive is quoted as saying:

“We had the option to buy Netflix for$50 million and we didn't do it. They were losing money. They came around a few times," he recalls. Instead, in 2000, Blockbuster inked a 20-year exclusive video-on-demand pact with Enron as the energy conglom launched into telecom. Blockbuster canned the pact after nine months. Netflix is now worth $1.4 billion. Blockbuster’s market cap is about $850 million.​

​

 

[Robert Maxwell]

BB made their bed with Enron. What more can you say?

 

[C.E. Evans]

I like the fact the one closest to me is staying open... for now... but I don't know why. The store next door even has a new "Blockbuster Box" which you can rent movies from like those red boxes.

I think that's the direction Blockbuster is going to go in. We'll see lots of store closings, but more and more of those "Blockbuster Express" kiosks popping up over the next few years (somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000?)
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/15844.html

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

How much do new releases cost at Blockbuster these days anyways? Last time I rented they were like 4 bucks or something ridiculous. My frikken Netflix is only 15 bucks a month.