I know that I’m in the sad minority, but I like Blockbuster video. The clerks at my local Broadway branch are always cuter than the ones at the Hollywood down the street. Am I shallow? Oh, yah, totally. But besides that, my local Blockbuster has a far better selection than the Hollywood. Not as good as Scarecrow, but I’m not going to the U-District to get Deadwood, know what I mean?
So the news that it’s apparently time to stick a fork in Blockbuster makes me sad. Unable to fight off new competition from the likes of Netflix, and losing marketshare to dastardly P2P downloaders, Blockbuster is losing money fast. So fast that its days, it seems, are numbered.
While closures aren’t imminent, they appear to be on the horizon. Sadly, it’s Blockbuster’s own fault for not taking the online world seriously and realizing that, like print media, the old way of doing things won’t work here in The Future.
Say goodbye to Blockbuster [C|Net]
Blockbuster might be thinking about taking the internet world seriously. They recently acquired Movielink, perhaps the best online movie download service currently running (Vongo is close, but is somewhat different). Now they need to hurry up and integrate it as a free part of their BlockBuster Total Access offering to stop the bleeding to Netflix.