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LEISURE VIDEO & DVD VOLUME 31

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BUGGLES HAD A NUMBER ONE HIT IN 1980 WITH THE SONG “VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR”. IRONIC THAT DVD THEN KILLED THE VIDEO STAR! WILL INTERNET DOWNLOADS KILL THE VIDEO AND DVD OUTLETS? FIONA MCDONALD REPORTS.

“W e can’t rewind, we’ve gone too far,” was a line in the chorus of the Buggles hit. Just how far have we gone? Are the predictions of the death of video and DVDs likely to come true? No. Predictions have been wrong before. Take newspapers for example. Ever since the WorldWideWeb as it was called when it was opened up to the public in the early nineties, people have been made to believe that newspapers would become irrelevant because of the internet and access to 24 hour news channels on television. While it’s true that newspaper circulations are dwindling, it’s more because people don’t have the time to read newspapers rather than a lack of affection for newspapers. Newspapers which have been smart and adapted to what their customers want – and can’t get anywhere else – are doing just fine, and in some cases even increasing their subscriptions. Publications such as the New York or London Times, the Washington Post, Le Monde, Frankfurter Algemein and others are still printing thousands of copies daily. Now retired, former marketing manager for Ster Kinekor Greg Landman said the days of making a quick buck out of a video shop is long gone. He should know – he used to own two. One of them has shut its doors but the remaining outlet is thriving.

“Audiences and customers used to be insatiable,” he said. “They HAD to have the hottest movies and they wanted them NOW! The difference is that nowadays there are so many ways to access what they want by streaming or downloading.”

So how has he managed to keep his doors open? By adapting to what consumers want. “The person you have behind the counter is more critical than ever. They are no longer ‘serving’ the customer. Today we help them to find something we KNOW they will love.”

Video and DVD rental shops, particularly the good ones, have become places where entertainment has become personal and curated. Business owners have had to adapt – or see their businesses die. The audience want things they cannot get from mainstream sources.

Landman observed that the successful operators are those who supply something extra. “Those movies people can’t get from mainstream sources. They want classics, foreign movies, kids pics that have meaning and, of course, the in-store experience which many people still crave. There’s a lot to be said for browsing the shelves and picking up a box and reading the back cover. People still love doing it.

“We have to stay on top of things and have thousands of titles in store, many of which they will battle to find elsewhere. We’re constantly on the lookout for – and finding – those special pictures which we hear people all the time saying things like ‘Oh, Papillon. I’ve been looking for this for years!’ “That’s music to my ears,” Landman said.

His experience mirrors that of video and DVD outlets the world over. Massive chains like Blockbuster which used to be synonymous with video rental in the United States, have gone out of business – but smaller, independent operations are not just still afloat: in some cases they are thriving!

In the early days of video rental – the mid-seventies – video shops also used to rent out the machines because so few people had the equipment to play either VHS cassettes or Betamax tapes on! At the start of the eighties less than 2 million American households had VCR recorders. By the end of the decade there were nearly 65 million households which owned the necessary hardware!

That was when movie studios, which had been reluctant to embrace the secondary video market, preferring to have their movies screened in cinemas and theatres, realised there was good money to be made … so much so that by 1987, video was making more money for studios than theatre releases.

People loved the convenience of being able to watch a great movie in the comfort of their own home, lounging around on the couch in their pyjamas, able to stop it at the press of the button to answer the phone or the call of nature – and the popcorn was cheaper and fresher too! It’s interesting to note that Netflix, now considered the big disrupter and a threat to the video and DVD market, had its roots in those heydays. Reed Hastings was a Blockbuster video client who was really irritated when charged a penalty fee for not returning his video on time! That $40 late return fee gave him the idea of starting a mail-order DVD rental service – Netflix. And in an interesting twist, Blockbuster turned down the opportunity of buying Netflix for just $50 million in 2000.

Netflix has gone from strength to strength while Blockbuster went bankrupt.

It might seem that those who try to keep video and DVD shops going as old-fashioned or nostalgic for the eighties and nineties, “analogue people in a digital world” as one writer stated it.

Jason Bailey wrote an in-depth article on this phenomenon for an

American website, Flavorwire, in 2016. (http://flavorwire.com/563171/ the-premature-death-of-the-videostore-and-why-its-worth-saving) There are a few salient points he makes: One is that these shops have become like film libraries with the people staffing it offering in-depth advice and knowledge – and that fosters a sense of community and connection; Netflix, which is the market leader in entertainment titles has focussed on original content at the expense of film culture.

He quoted Video Free Brooklyn’s Aaron Hillis: “So because of that they’re letting these licenses lapse, and now, if you want to watch great films of the canon, how do you see them? How do you watch The Godfather? How do you watch Citizen Kane? I’ll tell you right now: The works of Alfred Hitchcock are not on Netflix.”

So when Netflix streamed Skyfall with Daniel Craig as 007, people wanted to place it in context because

so many of the references were to the old, original James Bond movies – and Netflix didn’t have them. Cue the local video/DVD shop …

As one of the subjects in Bailey’s article said: “Video stores are a happy place to be in. It’s funny to say that, but it’s really true. Versus a grocery store, where you’re doing a chore; when you gotta go there, you don’t want to. You want to get in there and out of there. The video shop is a place where people meander, and they spend a little time, and they shop, and they’re looking at things, and they’re picking up movies, and they take their time. And there’s something to be said for that, in this busy world, somewhere there’s a place to slow down a little bit, in a good mood, and so we think of ourselves as part of an entertainment industry.”

So what does the future hold? As Landman said, they’ll be places which are independent, where it’s staffed by people who genuinely

love movies – of all ages and genres. They are the experts who will guide customers to something they might not think about trying. In other words, it’s a curated experience.

The business model will be somewhat lean and mean but fiercely independent, places with soul and personality offering something a website can’t.

There’s a real hankering for nostalgia. It’s why hipsters grow beards, wear buttoned-up collared shirts and type on typewriters rather than tablets – that forward-thinking retro idea. Times will always change. It’s all about evolution – which is constant, after all. Video shops won’t ever be as big as they once were – not with the convenience of movie downloads just one click away. As one pundit stated: Facebook friends are great but they haven’t replaced real-life friends …

So don’t write off the corner video and DVD shop just yet. ABOVE:The video shop is a place where people meander, and they spend a little time, and they shop, and they’re looking at things, and they’re picking up movies, and they take their time.