Those of you who regularly read my rants on this website know I still feel digital distribution of movies and TV shows is barely in its infancy. Services such as Hulu, YouTube, and Boxee are still developing. Apple is reportedly working on some kind of new digital-video service perhaps tied to a new generation of Apple TV perhaps due out as soon as this week. While we still have a long way to go, it doesn't look to me like the brick-and-mortar video stores will be making the trip. There was a time when the girlfriend and I would roam the isles on a Friday night along with many other movie lovers picking up our selections for a coming weekend, the video rental stores were seemingly on every corner...
Those days are in the rear view mirror folks and the car is picking up speed. The Los Angeles Times has reported Blockbuster reportedly plans to file something called a "pre-planned bankruptcy" and will continue to pay the studios and other most other major creditors. This development shouldn't surprise those paying attention to media tends. For many years now, Blockbuster has closed stores, laid off thousands, and generally been tumbling towards extinction. Driving to a video store to rent a movie has become as passe as hiring a travel agent, developing film, or listening to music on compact discs! Mainstream consumers have opted for renting movies via rental kiosks such as Redbox, cable's video-on-demand, and especially Internet rental services--most specifically Netflix. Since 2008, the once industry-dominant Blockbuster has lost more than a $1 billion and, adding insult to injury, just this month, Netflix penned a five-year deal worth nearly $1 billion to stream movies from Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM.
The Northern California based Netflix will likely top 20 million subscribers next year and last year generated $115 million in net profit on $1.6 billion in revenue. This is just the beginning of things to come and this new digital landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace and cloud computing only promises to speed this process up. What do you think? Will these massive chains like Blockbuster and Movie Gallery just go away or will they somehow adapt to a Redbox business model? I welcome your thoughts and comments via email, Facebook or AIM, they are always great reading.
