Word: rental
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Seem like a fuss? It is--a long-overdue fuss. About two years ago, the video-rental business began fading faster than Godzilla. Remarkably, the decline had little to do with new technologies like video on demand, long thought to be the industry's Death Star. The threats from technology persist. But it was management, not technology, that caused so much corporate pain and so many customer complaints. After all, how many times are you willing to go out for Titanic and come back with The Poseidon Adventure? Eventually you just stop going out. And that's exactly what happened...
...delivered a series of hit moves. Says Redstone: "He's great. Hiring John was as good a management move as I have ever made." Gone are the days when Blockbuster would send 1 in 5 shoppers home empty-handed while leaving scores of others disappointed. Worldwide rental revenues at stores open more than a year were up 13.3% in the second quarter. A year ago, they had slipped 3%. Active memberships have risen 7%, and internal customer-satisfaction surveys have rebounded to an all-time high...
...company's willingness to invest in too many copies of one film. Now Blockbuster has revenue-sharing deals with all but a couple of major studios. The deals dramatically lower Blockbuster's up-front costs to about $6 a tape. In exchange, Blockbuster hands over roughly 40% of rental revenue...
This strategy, though it has been around in some form for a decade, is worrying many independent video-rental dealers, who fear they lack the clout to make deals as beneficial as Blockbuster's. "We're at a disadvantage," says John Heim, owner of five video stores in Lakewood, Colo. He says he must pay 55% of revenue to a studio or a third-party broker and that the Blockbuster advantage (he competes with one two miles away) has hurt his business...
...still inclined to think of myself as a real person. I've been in the military since graduating in 1995 and married for almost a year now. In fact, I'll even be moving next month from an apartment to a house! Still a rental unit, but surely a step up the great chain-of-realness...