The place in Greenfield, Video To Go, which had the 7 movies for 7 days for 7 dollars deal I’ve gone on and on about here is going out of business, I found out yesterday. I’d done my level best to support them, but the word is that the market penetration of NetFlix is such that it’s shot their business down by 40%, and they can’t stay afloat. It’s so sad.
So, having just found out yesterday that they are going out of business today, I took advantage of their deal to rent any and all movies for just $1 each, overnight. I rented Superman Returns, which I hadn’t seen yet due to negative reviews, but knew I would see one day. I rented The Devil Wears Prada, and Art School Confidential, another movie based on the comic by Daniel Clowes (and which I anticipated finding more interesting as I bleive it's tangenetially about my art school which Clowes attended) and some computer animated kids faves (the flavor of the day for animated fare) like Flushed Away and Everybody’s Hero. Some of these we watched last night. Some of these we watched today. But since it was nice out, and I had no intention of staying in all day in front of the tube, some of them were unwatched when I had to return them this evening.
The atmosphere at the store was a bit somber, as was to be expected. It was like some great failed experiment, except that for me it was a success. What’s more troubling is that I’ve recently begun noticing this as a trend. Mom and Pop video stores are going the way of all things, even though they offer great resources for browsing and access to movies that you otherwise wouldn’t see on a NetFlix or certainly not at a Blockbuster. I mean, I miss being able to browse through an entire section of old black and white movies, or zero in on some film noir titles, or see a good romantic comedy from the seventies, or sixties. Looking through a vast list of titles on a shelf by alphabetical order is an adventure, and you find treasure that way. Stuff you’d find no other way. I mean, big box store paranoia is one thing-I think there’s room for price competition, and feel when people can pay less and they choose to, that is a free market at work. But this is marketing to the sedentary. These stores are going out of business because people can’t be bothered to interact with a human being to rent a movie, and can't get a video back into the store in the week alotted, for a measley buck. We pay more, to do less. And that’s just sad.
Maybe I’m not giving NetFlix a chance. I checked it out about five years ago, and signed up for an account, and had fun rating a lot of different movies I’d seen. I was aware that I was building a preference list in some hi-tech algorithm that I hoped that might help them to help me find titles I liked, that I didn't even know—kind of like what Amazon does. Then, on the trial, I ordered the first part of the first season of The Sopranos. And it promptly never came. The problem came when they started charging me, and I informed them that I had no intention to pay when, for the trial period, I’d received nothing to try. They zeroed me out, and I wrote them off.
So today I went onto the website again, and went looking for my five-year-old account, that I'd spent all that time indicating preferences for. And found it non-existent. And found no clear section to search for film noir titles, or films by Director, or staff picks, or any of the other intuitive (for me) ways that I’d go treasure hunting at my local store. Maybe I’m not giving them a chance. Likely I’m not, in fact. But they’re starting this relationship with two strikes against them, and the signs are not encouraging.
Video stores are becoming the new dinosaurs, the next Mom and Pops to go out of business, and I wouldn't care if it weren't for the fact that they're not offering something more, just something far less, that's just easier. And easier is killing what's fun for those of us that enjoy getting off our @$$ to hunt for something interesting to watch when we're sitting on our @$$. And that's not easy.
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3 comments:
:)
In a few years it will seem incredibly quaint that you had to get in your car and burn dead dinos to drive to a store to rent a movie pressed into a zillion pits in a disc made of more dead dinos.
Much like silent movie houses that still employ a pianist for kicks, there may be one or two video stores in your town that still replicate the in-person interaction and browse experience, but I bet most of them will rent you a file downloaded to your keychain thumbdrive.
Them's the breaks of forming an emotional attachment to an obsolete business model, Marcus!
All of which is nice in urban areas, where you can get high speed net access and to do things like download movies. I still have dialup, and can;t affort to have a T1 line installed, nor the cost of a dedicated dish. Though I would love to have access to those services, the providers have yet to consider my business worthwhile.
What happens when the cineplex buys the Rialto in Podunk Iowa, and then converts it to a multiplex, and then goes out of business becasue the market was designed to support single theater? It goes away, that's what, leaving neither the existing outlet not the new, improved. That's the lament of those of us on this side of the digital divide.
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