Bye bye Blockbuster

Only last week we had the news that Jessops has gone into Administration and then yesterday HMV the entertainment retailer announced its plans to do the same.  I'm also pretty sure that some of you also had the conversation around "who's going to be next?" in some sort of retail Dead Pool.

However, I don't think anyone was expecting an announcement within 24 hours that another major retailer had gone the same way. But today it was announced that Blockbuster, the video and game rental chain has gone into Administration too, making that three large High Street operators already this month.

There's no doubt that Blockbuster faced increasing competition from Internet-based services such as LoveFilm, as well as the overall trend of downloading and streaming movies and even games via the Internet. Blockbuster did make in-roads into a streaming service, but this functionality was not  available outside the United States.
http://www.blockbuster.com/download

A lot of commentors will no-doubt mention that this result has been predicted for some while, but I think this episode from South Park a while back pretty much sums up the situation...

Old school advertising is getting left on the shelf

I'm glad its not just me that thinks the old days of advertising going all the "talking but no listening" are dying out.

This commercial sums it up for me:

I'm feeling gloomy

Its hardly suprising... given that the UK is the 10th 'most gloomiest' country right now, according to Business Week:
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/01/0126_business_expectations/11.htm

However, a small ray of sunshine was demonstrated to me last weekend, when I was spending time with Ian, a friend of mine who runs the Lone Star comedy club in Folkestone Kent (Note: What a wonderful website that is ). His regular monthly comedy night was a complete sell-out and what does he put it down to?

"Its the recession! People are down about the economy and need cheering up"

At least they're not depressed... like the World apparently is:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7869748.stm