Video rental chain Blockbuster to close remaining stores
Before Netflix and video on demand, there was Blockbuster. The video rental chain was once the place to go for picking out a late-night movie. But times have definitely changed,…
By Avishay Artsy • • 1 min readBut times have definitely changed, and DISH, Blockbuster’s current owner, today announced it will close its 300 remaining U.S. stores by early January. The Blockbuster-By-Mail service will end in mid-December.
KCRW’s Steve Chiotakis speaks with Paul Whitefield from the LA Times and Michael Schneider from TV Guide Magazine about the closure of the once-omnipresent brick-and-mortar video store.
“It’s almost like a Calvinist thing,” Whitefield said. “We in America, we like to suffer along with our pleasure. There was a delicious suffering to everybody having to go to Blockbuster to get their videos, and it was kind of a bonding experience.”