When Netflix announced a 60% price hike for streaming and by-mail subscriptions, you'd have thought the sky was falling. More than 12,000 people left comments on Netflix's blog post that explained the changes; thousands more took to social media to complain; and every major media outlet covered the negative reaction…
Blockbuster has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. $900 million in debt (and Netflix) will do that.
Blockbuster—an anachronism in a Netflix/ on demand world—will be filing for bankruptcy next month, according to the LA Times. Fear not, sentimental veterans of many a "Blockbuster night" (making out): the Blockbuster brand shall not disappear.
The Way We Live Now: Sportingly. We shall not behave as animals simply because the recession is ravaging our society, shall we? As long as we have sports, we shall always have dignity. Uh. Do we still have sports?
• Is NBC shutting down Jay Leno's 10pm show and moving him back to late night? Is Conan O'Brien out of a job? NBC isn't denying that a schedule change has been discussed, but it's not saying much more than that for now. [NYT]
• ABC News is reportedly in negotiations with Ted Koppel to bring him back to the network as…
The video-rental store is doomed, and even Blockbuster has figured that much out. That's why CEO Jim Keyes is trying to buy Circuit City for more than $1 billion? Blockbuster has become the RadioShack of its time, saddled with too many stores which are too small, selling the wrong thing. It jumped on the business of…
When not bawdlerizing movies or trying, and failing, to kill Netflix, Blockbuster has been busy planning to develop and ship a set-top box that will allow customers to download movies at home. The company purchased online movie download service Movielink for $6.6 million last August. But it still hasn't integrated…
Stock traders weren't blown away by Steve Jobs's Macworld announcements, sending Apple shares down 5 percent. Rivals faired even worse, however. From the numbers, they expect Apple's movie-rental service with support from all of the major studios to pummel brick-and-mortar competitor Blockbuster, and to a lesser…
Viacom is determined not to fall into the music industry's technophobic trap. Instead, it's embracing the online-video frenzy by releasing Jackass 2.5 directly onto the Web next week. Initially offered as a free streamed video on Blockbuster's Movielink, it will eventually move to pay outlets like iTunes and, yes, DVD…
By publishing the names of customers and the videos they rented, Facebook and Blockbuster may have violated the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988, New York law professor James Grimmelmann explains on his blog. Don't worry Zuck, it's only $2,500 per violation.
DVD rent-by-mail operation Netflix may be kicking rival Blockbuster where it hurts, but all is not well with the company. According to the U.S. Postal Service, the ubiquitous red return envelopes used by Netflix, hailed for saving the company millions of dollars, are prone to jamming mail sorting machines. The USPS…
Through-the-mail movie rental outfit Netflix has been very aggressive in fighting Blockbuster's competitive advances — and winning. Analytics firm Compete has a rundown of Netflix vs. Blockbuster and lists Netflix.com as having four times the visitors Blockbuster.com does. Also, Netflix's download strategy seems to be…
Here's what no one's saying about Blockbuster's acquisition of Movielink, the Hollywood-backed movie-download site: It's a desperate move to shore up Blockbuster's online failures. Blockbuster, remember, has been promising video downloads for most of this decade. First came a deal with Enron's broadband division, and,…
