In comments on the previous post, Disgrunted Manatee suggests:
As others have said, without a picture of the selection from previous ages, it is hard to digest this data. I still recall Blockbuster having an entire aisle to display 100 copies of each of the 3 most popular movies at the time, then 3 aisles holding a random smattering of other stuff. The selection was never all that grand. Anecdotally in my small experience, the selection now just with netflix is way better than in my childhood with blockbuster and two other brick and mortar video store memberships combined.
A few points in response:
1. Blockbusters were, for the most part, terrible video stores, focused as they – and Netflix, for that matter – were on feeding consumer demand for the newest hottest things, rather than being consumer-oriented pay libraries (which are generally profitable enterprises, if not as profitable as stoking consumer demand to hyperactive proportions).
2. Your typical Blockbuster – and I can speak to this as I had multiple siblings work there – worked on stocking principles that dictated that half of the store’s shelf space was devoted to new releases (with the newest and hottest releases taking more prominence, of course), and half to older stock. This contrasted with more traditional video stores, where (and I personally worked at several, so I can also speak to this) generally had a new release/long tail ratio of anywhere from 40-60 (your neighborhood mom and pop store) to 20/80 (the really good video stores that took movies seriously).
3. Compare to Netflix, where we actually have hard statistics to determine how much of their catalogue can be considered recent thanks to sites like New On Netflix. Thanks to that site, I can tell you that Netflix Canada has 5,190 titles right now, and of those 5,190 titles 3,007 are less than three years old. That’s 58 percent! And that’s before you remove TV programs from the equation, because TV series are considered (for search purposes) single titles with their year being the earliest season available on Netflix, so most TV series skew older rather than newer, which means that the percentage of movies on Netflix that could be considered reasonably recent is actually even higher than it looks at first glance.
4. Just as important, though, is the fact that although most video stores and Blockbusters would generally clear out their new releases stock as “previously viewed” sales to increase their revenue, they would keep one or two copies of each new release to be incorporated into their older stock, because although the long tail for rentals is a thing, for movies that are 5-10 years old you’re still in the medium of the long tail where there was an active audience of people who were only getting around to see any given movie which they had intended to see for a while (this happened regularly with prestige pictures/Oscar winners), and after the medium of the long tail passed there was still the long tail of revenue to be generated from movies which had already seen the vast majority of their lifetime rentals but which could earn additional revenue every so often simply by sitting there and being available.
5. The average Blockbuster had a movie library of approximately 7,000 titles at any given time (per Big-Box Swindle by Stacy Mitchell); independent video stores almost always exceeded this, with “good” video stores often exceeding 15,000 titles. Netflix – regardless of country – has at any point a library of in between 5-6,000 titles. That is usually about 20% TV shows (and many of the TV shows are marginal things); it usually also includes about 20% bottom-bin straight-to-DVD releases (and straight-to-video releases were certainly a part of any video store’s inventory, but the ratio was usually about 10% rather than 20%). There really isn’t any numerical question that Netflix’s service is inferior to practically all video stories in terms of variety of catalogue.
So, the basic response to Manatee’s comment is the least satisfying one to all concerned, which is “your memory isn’t really accurate.” Regular video stores were better for catalogue than Blockbuster was, and Blockbuster was better for catalogue than Netflix was.
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> Regular video stores were better for catalogue than Blockbuster was, and Blockbuster was better for catalogue than Netflix was.
But video stores charged $5/rental (near enough), had annoying rules about late returns and rewinding, periodically didn’t have what you wanted in stock, and generally required a 10-20 minute car ride to access.
Netflix runs me $12/mo, never charges me for anything except accessing the service, always has everything listed in their catalog, and is accessible the second I plant my ass in front of my TV.
I think there’s a real problem with getting a broader catalog of videos together, likely due to the tangle of licensing issues associated with older titles. And I don’t doubt it’ll take something like a major license-holder bankruptcy to shake a lot of that stuff loose. But I do think you’re missing the forest for the trees in this gripe.
Netflix might have a smaller library, but it has (a) quite a bit of good original content that mirrors/supplants the missing old stuff and (b) none of the hassle of physical media. This might be heresy, but I’d honestly trade another season of Stranger Things for a dozen 70s/80s-era off-brand horror flicks.
I’ll disagree with Zifnab’s comment above, despite the valid complaints they have made about the problems with physical video stores of the past.
If you didn’t like a particular store/they didn’t have what you wanted on a given day, you could just go to the next store and try again.
This very much does not apply to Netflix, most especially in Australia, where your choices are a very limited Netflix, or 2-3 even more limited competitors with increasingly worse UIs and smaller catalogues.
And the average bricks&mortar video store of old wasn’t nearly as irritating (to me) with the intrusive and constant marketing. (cf: Here’s the latest new thing we’re pushing: We think you’ll hate it, but we’re still going to have it take up the top of the main page for weeks!)
Or the not infrequent ‘Ooops, we had that show/movie/doco yesterday but today we don’t! Too bad!’
Well I guess I deserve a “Schooled!”
Thank you for replying. Honestly, I am impressed with your knowledge and research abilities in finding pretty solid data on old school stores.
It sure *feels* like more things are being released more often and Neftlix is a bottomless well, but old video stores also existed more in my memory at a time when my own selection was limited to a few genres, no R ratings, and PG-13 only after Dad read the back and approved. And Netflix props up their numbers with bargain-bin international movies or low budget things it can likely license for next to nothing.
Plus, I have the pride/shame of being in the US. According to this site (https://www.finder.com/netflix-usa-vs-world-content) Canada has barely over half of the US selection (which does include Young Frankenstein).
I’m lucky to live around the corner from a brick-and-mortar DVD store, and I can’t tell you how much I love it.
I’ve seen tons of movies I never would have otherwise (Montgomery Clift marathon, anyone?), just because the store stocks a wide variety of genres/titles, and the staff is happy to make recommendations.
It’s sad that more people aren’t exposed to cinema/music/art/whatever that isn’t mainstream and/or recent. My husband and I joke that if this DVD store ever closes, we’re moving.
I still haven’t gotten over the loss of Hastings. Hastings stores always had a huge selection, including a lot of the independent movies I tend to love, both for rent and for sale.
And the local store seemed to be pretty profitable from what I could tell. There were always lots of customers. But unfortunately, it seems the parent company was badly managed in recent years. They still outlasted every other big chain I’m aware of, though.
Speaking as somebody who used to work at Blockbuster I’ll agree that they had skewed priorities, but at the same time I can also tell you that the giant wall of new copies of whatever’s hot was very much a needed thing, as we would invariably be out within a few days if the movie had any buzz whatsoever.
Mind you, after that first week the need dropped precipitously, but there you are.
Unrelated to any of this, but I could only appreciate it thanks to the window you provided to Canadian politics: https://imgur.com/gallery/zLaEY
I wrote a long post, but really: it all reads like a bunch of nostalgia tinting to me.
The percentage of new videos is indicative of Netflix superiority if we know how many titles the averag blockbuster had – if blockbuster had about 2000 not good. If blockbuster had netflix like inventory good, greater than netflix inventory size really great
To me, a lot of this debate reads as: the copyright term basically everywhere is way, way, way too long. The middle of the 20th century is getting hollowed out in our memory because of all this gating.