The World’s Last Blockbuster Has No Plans to Close. Here’s Why It’s Still Open | Hacker News Reader

The World’s Last Blockbuster Has No Plans to Close. Here’s Why It’s Still Open

nytimes.com

40 pointsandore_jr23 comments

Saving all of you a click: the article doesn't go into a concrete explanation of why they're not closing the last Blockbuster.

It has a theory, however:

>One possible explanation for the store’s long life: Bend is in a region that the city’s mayor, Sally Russell, describes as having “huge expanses with really small communities” that often do not have easy access to the high-speed internet necessary for content streaming.

>Many residents of outlying areas stop at Blockbuster during their weekly trips to town to run errands, drawn in part by the store’s seven-day rental policy, Ms. Russell said, adding that the store’s last-in-the-world status could even give it a lift.

Eh, that's true about Bend but it doesn't explain why that one stayed and the Blockbuster in Anchorage (and hundreds of other similar places) closed. Vacation rentals keeping it in business?

Those of us in the Midwest tend to laugh every time a variation of this story pops up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Video https://www.familyvideo.com/storelocator/

The relevant bit from Wikipedia, "Unlike much of its competition, Family Video owns the real estate housing their stores, helping them to avoid unsuccessful lease negotiations that led to the demise of Blockbuster and Movie Gallery, which includes Hollywood Video. And rather than depending on the revenue-sharing model used by others in the business, the chain buys and owns their movies, allowing them to keep all the rental profit"

So come on over to Fly-Over Country™ where video rental stores never went out of fashion :)

They were (are) also significantly cheaper than what Hollywood Video and Blockbuster were charging at their heyday. 15 years ago, often at BB and HV rentals would be $4-6, FV often had rentals from $1-3.

At some point isn’t it a better use of the real estate for them to switch business models and start distributing something of higher margin and with more demand?

They could probably convert to coffee shops or gun stores and do better in those markets.

Not knocking gun culture. I lived and still often work in the Midwest.

The loving nostalgia for dead corporate behemoths is kind of curious. Blockbuster shut down a ton of mom-and-pop video stores. Circuit City and Good Guys did the same for small electronics retailers. Tower Records killed small record shops, then Tower itself got killed and a documentary was made lamenting its passing!

that’s the power of branding. We can't lament the passing of all the mom and pop stores because there is no common brand to unite us.

Back then the brand stood for the enemy. The faceless corporation. Now the brand represents a time past and a place we all had in common.

Funny how that works.

For those in the US, something I have found pleasantly surprising is that the local library (this is a "small" library with only two branches) feels this niche quite well. I have been able to get recent releases as well as it having a pretty healthy supply of general interest and some specialize interest movies. They have an online catalog so I can search and set a hold on a movie, book, or other physical media so I can go in, grab it, and go. Many of them allow you to rent an obscene amount of movies at once (the limit at mine is 20 movies check out at a time), and it's free! On top of that, they partner with a digital service that also allows you to "rent" a set amount of movies/shows/ebooks per month (for free!).

Something I have not tried is to see what happens if they don't have a movie/book/show that I want. I imagine they have a process to request them buying it if there's enough interest.

It makes me wonder what Blockbuster corporate is like, and how you handle that transition. Ten years ago I imagine they have a corporate office with hundreds of employees, a CEO earning millions, and a highly paid consultancy firm telling them how to reinvent the business. Now the CEO is the manager of the last store and the CFO is the employee who helps him count the cash at night?

Dish network owns the Blockbuster brand, so it’s probably just a few hours of work for some lawyers employed by Dish network to cross some t’s and dot some i’s for the legalities of the Bend, OR franchisee to keep using the brand.

When this news came out yesterday, someone stationed at Gitmo (Guantanamo Bay Naval Base) called into a morning radio show in Norfolk and said the Blockbuster at the Exchange was still open. DVDs only, $2 a day, no late fees. (They just keep charging you $2 a day.)

For anyone who wants to learn more about Blockbuster and Netflix, the Acquired podcast has a phenomenal episode which covers The saga in depth: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/season-3-episode-8nbspnetfl...

I think it is an authentic shop and it is actually a little bit sad that almost all of the shops are closed. I understand that it is hard for them to compete with Netflix and others, but for those who want the experience of go and rent a dvd it is sad news.

That's not the last Blockbuster in the world. There's one near me in Rome.

That's been closed for a while now...peek in the windows and see the desolation...what do you do in Rome? Not a native Italian but I left because of lack of tech scene(among other things)

Very much off topic but being in the process of choosing a "base" in the EU I'm curious to know where you ended up living, that has a good tech scene.

I have friends in Berlin that like it a lot. Amsterdam is doing pretty well too, a bunch of high frequency trading outfits moved there from London over the last few years because of the talent pool. I think Copenhagen has a decent scene, but I’ve no direct connections there. I’m in London and there’s plenty of work but the finance and telecoms industries suck up most of the top talent.

Due to my dual nationality, I had all of the US to (easily) choose from as well as the EU, so I actually ended up in NYC. The income differential as a senior software engineer was just too great to consider staying in the EU

> what do you do in Rome

I babysit a couple of WebSphere instances running on iSeries hardware, mainly. They call it DevOps, for some reason...

I hope they're not entitled to my late fees

Sometimes I wonder if all journalists do is browse reddit all day. Invariably, something I see on reddit gets a "news" article a few months later.

The last blockbuster apparently has an official beer too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/9tx0y3/t...

Have you read "Trust Me, I'm Lying" by Ryan Holiday?

While he was working at American Apparel, he figured out that while it was expensive to advertise directly on major news sites, etc, it was fairly easy to figure out what smaller sites were the real "influencers." By advertising or promoting material there, he got coverage on larger blogs for a fraction of the price.

astroturfin on reddit/whatever chan you think is tolerable is pretty common now. the days before the aladdin trailer reveal had will smith and aladdin nostalgia popup all over the place

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