Blockbuster wants to marry Circuit City for $1B
This is batshit crazy. I’m not really the only one thinking this but its worth saying again, this is batshit crazy. Here’s why:
- Blockbuster is in a dying business.
- Circuit City is in a cut-throat business where it can’t turn a profit.
- Combining these two businesses does not equate with profit.
Sure, lots of people don’t have any of those things and millions of people get to rent DVDs but this group is getting smaller by the day. All access HD digital distribution is a long ways away because there is a lack of bandwidth but Blockbuster is giving us the same crap today as it was 15 years ago.
Blockbuster is stuck renting movies while everyone and their moms are out innovating new delivery mechanisms that make Blockbuster more irrelevant. Instead of buying Circuit City, why can’t Blockbuster create a new rental process that was compelling? What if I could rent a few-dozen movies off a cheap storage device that I could recharge at the Blockbuster store every few weeks? What if I could rent a 100GB HD for a fixed price that had every episode of the Sopranos that I could watch for 3 months? (There are murmurs of this idea but its obvious to anyone.)
Blockbuster City has nothing, nothing that will change this rental process. The only winners here are the Circuit City shareholders who were screwed to begin with. At least they’ll have a nice payday.
