In Reply to: Downfall of Blockbuster............ posted by RedGrant on May 30, 2011 at 15:36:46:
Regardless of what Blockbuster says about that. Their blather must be for their (ancient??) stockholders, it certainly doesn't fool their (former) customers.In Canada, BB was actually quite profitable and had quite a lot of cash in the bank too. They just declared bankruptcy a couple weeks ago here, because BB (U.S.) used BB (Canada) as collateral for their debts and BBUS defaulted.
It is an entirely different internet data market in Canada than the U.S., and way more expensive too, so downloading content will probably remain well behind the U.S. (per capita) for quite a while. Partly because of that (the rest is mostly regulation), Netflix and other similar are really just getting started here and have a minimal impact. BBs are still open here (they only closed ~140 so far) and still appear normally busy, least around here. There are other major B&M competitors still operating too, and I bet BB hopes they'll be bought in entirety by them.
Way more than you asked, but just backing up that the cost/availability of downloading content in two "similar" markets affects B&M movie rental viability. Regardless of what BB says... (can you tell I have a beef with them?...a bunch of credit that I don't know if I'll ever see...not a good idea to wipe regular customers' credit IMO, but law may not be flexible on that??)
Edits: 05/30/11
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Follow Ups
- Netflix - cfraser 22:06:10 05/30/11 (0)