Nobody leaves home? Whatever! internet friend I’ve never met before!

I've never been into movies...name any hit movie over the past 40 years, and odds are I haven't seen it....no biggie ;). But for decades, I would hit the record store(s) virtually every Tuesday...when the new albums/cds hit the shelves....the journey was the prize...just like y'all are talking about BB....we're losing our collective soul....not the band though :(

They were dimly lit.

The carpets were nasty.

The place smelled.

The staff acted like they'd rather be changing bed pans in a geriatric facility.

They never had enough product.

They used to lose your returns then you'd have to argue over the fee's.

They acted like they were and would forever be the only game in town and treated their customers accordingly.

Most importantly they either never knew or simply forgot what their business was.

It was maybe 5 years back I got a call from them, wanted to know if I was interested in coming on board.

I asked the guy, "I know the answer but would like to here it from you, what is your business? What does Blockbuster do?"

His response was "we rent entertainment media, movies, games, etc..."

I told him he was wrong and thanks for the call but no thanks.

That was never their business, they were always a distribution channel. That's it, nothing more.

Not recognizing that is what kept BB focused on physical goods.

Sometimes universities have property dispersion sales, or library book club sales have media, or teacher's orgs handles books, or salvation army, or the giant bin at walmart, or start yer own local 'movie club' through a meet-up app and trade knowledge?
You people living out in the stix tend to have your stuff together.

I actually liked going out to the physical stores and shopping through all the isles, but quit Blockbuster after a $35 fine for a day or two late, and for $5 I could go to the theatre matinee and see it big screen.

When I lived in Ft. Lauderdale I worked for the GC that handled all the work at the corporate offices downtown. This was in 1995-6. One day I'm asked to go up to Boca to another one of their buildings where they were working of future business models. When I asked what they do up there the person who I reported to with BB says to me, "Their working on some crazy internet movie stuff where you can order movies and watch anytime you want on your TVs. Sound pretty far fetched to me". Little did he know at the time....

Wayne Huizenga was a pretty ruthless businessman and also very successful. He used video rentals to build an empire and then moved on to AutoNation and sports team ownership.

The empire he built was Waste Management... he repeated it w/ BB on a smaller scale.

And he sold BB to Viacom (Sumner Redstone) before it tanked....

Great post! I remember my ex wife being treated like crap back in the 80s by a store clerk.

Understandable for those who don't understand Moores.

Mid 90's if you could stream SD at 15 FPS on a local network without significant compression artifacts and buffering you were cutting edge.

Of course that took a bleeding edge $10K pc and still looked like ****.