The Beginning of it All

When I was a kid, renting movies was a big part of my life. My cousin, my sisters, and I
could ride our bikes down the street and find a movie to rent easily since there was a Blockbuster
around the corner from our house. Then as we grew older, more and more places where we could
rent movies popped up. I even remember when my family started doing the Netflix movie rentals
and we would go to the mailbox to pick them up. Those bike rides became less and less, and
eventually Blockbuster became somewhere we would go for nostalgic reasons but definitely not
as often.
Blockbuster was founded in 1985 by a software developer named David Cook. The goal
of founding it was to give people an easy way to have access to renting movies and even having
the larger, more popular movies readily available all the time (Neese 2023). A man named
Wayne Huizenga, who ended up taking over after Cook left in 1988, began inflating the
expansion of the company (Estevez 2024). By the 1900’s there were Blockbusters all around the
world and even with the rise of new competitor stores the Blockbuster empire was still sold to
Viacom in 1994 (Igorgrochu 2024).

The Fall of a King

Although Blockbuster ended up becoming a staple across America, when big competitors
like Redbox and Netflix appeared Blockbuster couldn’t exactly keep up. Redbox was pretty
much how it’s been today with stalls or kiosks in front of stores that you can rent movies at.
Netflix started as a mail-order rental company. So you could order the movies you wanted to rent
and they’d get sent to your house so a lot of people, including my family, preferred that so they didn’t have to go anywhere and could just stay home. It’s also interesting seeing how far Netflix
has come since then (Igorgrochu 2024).
One of the big issues that Blockbuster began having was that they had very expensive
late fees that Netflix, didn’t have a late fee for their rentals. So a lot of people preferred getting
their rentals from somewhere they could easily access and wouldn’t overcharge them on late
fees, not to mention that Redbox would put their kiosks at places that would be very convenient
for people to rent from (Igorgrochu 2024). I mainly see them at places like Walmart or other
grocery stores and anyone walking out can just decide, “oh lets rent a movie to watch while we
eat dinner tonight”.
Another big issue with Blockbuster was that in order to keep expanding, the company
gained enormous amounts of debt. With its lack of customers and strong competition, the money
needed to pay off the debt wasn’t coming. Even with all the competition, they still kept their late
fees and even though they did attempt to create an online rental service similar to the Netflix one,
it was too late because everyone still preferred Netflix (Igorgrochu 2024).
Once Netflix and the other competitors really started taking over, Blockbuster finally
started to make changes. These changes included revamps of their stores which ended up leading
to a loss of over $500 million dollars (Neese 2023). Eventually, after much hardship and
struggles, in 2010 Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy (Igorgrochu 2024). After the fall of
Blockbuster, Netflix created a show that was about the last Blockbuster still open, which is in
Oregon as of 2023 (Estevez 2024).

Lessons and Personal Assessments

One thing I think that Blockbuster should have done differently, would be to adapt to
their surroundings and the competition around them. Examples of this would be when
competitors came around to have discount events or lower the costs of their rentals. According to
Neese in the Ripley’s Believe It or Not article, it is mentioned that if Blockbuster had followed
through with the new things that were coming around like the online delivery services, then they
would likely still be around (Neese 2023). They eventually stopped charging the late fees
sometime in the early 2000’s but because the late fees were a big part of the profit, and they were
already sliding downhill, this caused major losses and forced them to close many stores (Esteves
2024).
At some point during their fall, Blockbuster had the opportunity to purchase Netflix for
50 million dollars but unfortunately, they declined. They believed they would still come out on
time even though Netflix happened to be their biggest threat, they were wrongly mistaken (Neese
2023). Once Netflix’s show about the last Blockbuster came out, people started missing it and
feeling very nostalgic about it according to Vice. Even one of the old owners of several
Blockbusters mentioned how simple it was to work for them and how much the customers loved
the contents and employees loved working there. The biggest issue to him really was the $40 late
fee (Castrodale 2024).
In today’s age, adaptation is a very big step when it comes to progression. Look at Apple
developing their own type of AI just because AI is one of the newer and better developments
within these technological companies. Look at HBO for creating their own streaming service in a
way to compete with Netflix, Hulu, and Prime Video. Everywhere there are people challenging
others or trying new things to be better than their peers. If Blockbuster had tried to either hop online like Netflix or even have kiosks around like Redbox, I think they would be as big as the
other popular streaming services today. But for now they will continue to be a happy memory
from my childhood that I will miss.

References

Castrodale, Jelisa. “Why We’re All so Nostalgic for Blockbuster Right Now.” VICE, 27 July
2024, www.vice.com/en/article/why-were-all-so-nostalgic-for-blockbuster-right-
now/.
Estevez, Michelle. “The Rise and Fall of Blockbuster.” The Charles Street Times, 8 Jan. 2024,
lindynews.org/16242/entertainment/the-rise-and-fall-of-blockbuster/.
Igorgrochu. “The Rise and Fall of Blockbuster: A Detailed Account.” Medium, Medium, 1 July
2024, medium.com/@igorgrochu/the-rise-and-fall-of-blockbuster-a-detailed-
account-11324a49acd9.
Neese, Jordan. “Blockbuster: The Rise and Fall of the Iconic Video Store: Ripley’s Believe It or
Not!: Aquariums, Attractions, Museums.” Ripley’s, Ripley’s, 9 June 2023,
www.ripleys.com/stories/blockbuster.
Note: I used grammarly to check to see if I had any plagiarism.