2005: Blockbuster sees the writing on the wall?

Everyone's got a favourite Blockbuster story, but this one pretty much sealed it for me. On a recent visit I asked the forlorn, gum-chewin' assistant if they had a copy of a film i was looking for. "No", she said, "we only stock what people really want now". Thank you. I'm either not a person, or don't really know what I want (admittedly both of these are possibilities).

As much as I’d like it to happen, Blockbuster won’t disappear in 2005, but they’re going to begin to see that carrying forty-four copies of Bridget Jones 2 is not enough to keep the consumer happy. Distributing videos over WIMAX networks is still a ways away in Australia, but snail-mail DVD services will be fine tuned and Foxtel’s Personal Video Recorder (200 Gig?) should give Pay-TV renewed attention. Also, the massive whack of broadband users that jumped onboard at the $29.95 price point, will begin to find interesting online video sources (Oh yeah – and watch less TV.. along with everyone else).