The Biz

[Dimwitted]

Blockbuster lost $435 million US last quarter. The consensus seems that they can't last a year. Will that hurt or help the biz? Can the Mom and Pop rental places make a comeback? Will this affect new releasing?

Your thoughts.

[Steve T Power]

We're right across the street from one (our store that is) and they do a great deal more volume than we do. That said i know they're paying about 7 times more in rent than us, and i've heard from a few people now that there are rumblings that the store might be going buhbye, which had myself and the owner ready to dance a jig.

We'll see what happens...

[mavrach]

A lot of places are going out of business around here. FYE closed a few stores, and frankly I can't beleive they've lasted as long as they have with their prices.

We had a local place called CD World that had the most incredible selection of movies & music, gone. That was a shock to me.


If Blockbuster can't stay in business, I don't think any rental store will be able to. Blockbuster booted out the mom & pop rental stores because it had the ability to carry a larger stock and more variety than them at lower costs. If Blockbuster itself is being defeated by Netflix, I don't see how a smaller business would be able to work out. They wouldn't be able to compete with Netflix in costs or in catalogue.


There don't seem to be a lot of places left to actually BUY DVD's at a decent price anymore. We've got Best Buy & Walmart still standing. I could go to FYE if I wanted to pay $26.99 for a new movie. We've been buying off Amazon lately.

What about used DVD's? This has been a major way that we've amassed the collection that we've had. Most of these places have some sort of a "Buy 2 get 1 free" deal or something. Blockbuster always had 3 or $25, so I'd sweep through once a month. If Blockbuster goes down, I wil be forced to solely buy new DVD's and as a result will become much pickier in my selections, and the purchases will only be rarer.

Does anybody know how the market itself is doing? Are people buying a lot less, or is Blockbuster simply paying for its issues at this point?

[Steve T Power]

A lot of places are going out of business around here. FYE closed a few stores, and frankly I can't beleive they've lasted as long as they have with their prices.

We had a local place called CD World that had the most incredible selection of movies & music, gone. That was a shock to me.


If Blockbuster can't stay in business, I don't think any rental store will be able to. Blockbuster booted out the mom & pop rental stores because it had the ability to carry a larger stock and more variety than them at lower costs. If Blockbuster itself is being defeated by Netflix, I don't see how a smaller business would be able to work out. They wouldn't be able to compete with Netflix in costs or in catalogue.


There don't seem to be a lot of places left to actually BUY DVD's at a decent price anymore. We've got Best Buy & Walmart still standing. I could go to FYE if I wanted to pay $26.99 for a new movie. We've been buying off Amazon lately.

What about used DVD's? This has been a major way that we've amassed the collection that we've had. Most of these places have some sort of a "Buy 2 get 1 free" deal or something. Blockbuster always had 3 or $25, so I'd sweep through once a month. If Blockbuster goes down, I wil be forced to solely buy new DVD's and as a result will become much pickier in my selections, and the purchases will only be rarer.

Does anybody know how the market itself is doing? Are people buying a lot less, or is Blockbuster simply paying for its issues at this point?

We're in a situation where the Jumbo Video franchise predates blockbuster's arrival in the province (with stores of a similar size) by almost a decade. So we've got some recognition on our side. I can only speak for our store when i say that yes, business is down, but here, Netflix is a total non-issue. The selection of movies over the last year has bit the big one, with fewer big rental titles (A LOT more genre stuff, mostly horrors and comedies, which don't have the legs of a good action adventure flick or drama) and the prevalence of "on demand" movie rentals on digital cable definitely stings a little.

Generally speaking - the market is down across the board, which has studios terrified. I'm telling you right now, it's the output, not the formats.

[Dimwitted]

One of the issues in Canada is the fact that Netflix has never gotten a strong foothold in the market. There's at least 3 different services all more or less a Netflix Lite and beating each other up in the market. Not as much of a threat.

Streaming OTOH is the real threat only held back by the big service providers. Both Rogers and Bell are terrible for thruput. If they ever got their heads out of their asses we could have something. So far, I think you're safe Steve. I just worry about the new releases. It's not a stretch to believe that they abandon dvd's because of what's happening south of us. We're always ignored.