re: Would you say the video rental business had about a 25 yr run?

The small town I grew up in still has the same one that’s been there before I was born. My grandparents house was like 50 yds away. Same owner, I could rent movies at like 9-10 yrs old. You’d tell them the account, first letter of last name and last 4 of phone number and pay.

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Blockbuster

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To think Netflix offered to sell to Blockbuster in the mid 2000's and the idiots running Blockbuster turned them down, then tried doing their own mail service which failed spectacularly. Then they came up with the no late fees policy which was the iceberg that sunk em. Everyone switched to Netflix and On Demand via cable and Blockbuster withered away pretty quickly.

I was working at a Blockbuster when the no late fees crap started - it never made any sense to me. The first big release that came out after it started was Troy. We got about 150 dvd's of it out on the shelf on Tuesday. It was all rented out by the end of the day. What was normally a two day rental (meaning people would usually bring em back Thursday night giving the store plenty of return inventory for the weekend), the new policy said they had up to TWO WEEKS to bring it back or they'd be charged for the disc. Eventually people got tired of coming into the store because we were always out of the new releases for months. Why in the hell would people who couldn't get it in store wait for weeks trying to rent a particular movie?
Cable companies and Netflix pounced and destroyed Blockbuster.
I still cannot understand why the corporates completely torpedoed their own company like they did. No late fees was a TERRIBLE idea but they didn't listen to the grunts in the stores that raised red flags before and immediately after they implemented it. I'll never forget that first weekend of Troy's release and we didn't get a single copy of it back. The old people that were always in the store on Tuesday morning cleared out the shelves and held onto it until the next Tuesday when the next releases came out. It was a complete disaster. Our store manager said our revenue dropped by 85% in the first weekend of No Late Fees because the new release wall was empty.

I actually remembered this weekend or the two that followed reading your post-I distinctly recall the clerk shaking his head in disgust that there was no new releases left on the wall and him saying something like customers are so pissed if this keeps up I’ll be out of a job in a month. No late fees was the beginning of the end.

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Major Video.

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The group that worked at the one of Perkins are still some of the best people.

I would be a frequent customer. Now and again a movie I saw once as a kid pops in my head. I have all streaming services except Apple TV. I wait for it to come on but some movies just don’t stream on the services. I have a list in my phone. I’ll give you my Top 5:

The Last Starfighter
The Mosquito Coast
Falling Down
The Legend of Boggy Creek
Fortress

I’d totally go to a rental store tonight for all of these!!!

Still exists. Just a lot of middle men cut out

Video Co-op on Greenwell Springs road was a magical place.

I remember the gorilla like it was yesterday.

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Blockbuster execs completed a thorough analysis of the idea of buying Netflix and at the time the transaction didn’t make good business sense.

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be that as it may, they’re now a prime case study of brick and mortar falling by the wayside and not being prepared for a market disruptor