A just-announced joint venture between Verizon and Redbox will soon offer a service combining video streaming and physical DVD rentals. Now wait just a sec. Isn’t there some company that already does both of those things?
A year ago, observers speculated that 2011 would become the “Year of the Cord Cutter,” during which a record number of consumers would drop their cable subscriptions. Needless to say, the vast majority of American households still have a pay TV plan. When, if ever, will a massive cutting of the cord take place?
It’s fairly standard practice today for movies to become available for sale on one day, and only become available for rent after several more weeks have passed. For four or so weeks, the only way fans can see the movie is to buy it. For obvious reasons, this 28-day test in delayed gratification succeeds in [...]
A highly volatile stock market may have given you whiplash in 2011. But as the year draws to a close, the final numbers don’t look so dramatic: the S&P 500 is poised to end the year almost exactly where it began, and about as many Fortune 500 companies’ shares rose as fell.
Month after month, hundreds of thousands of cable TV subscribers keep closing their accounts. Roughly a half-million subscriptions were canceled in the second quarter of 2011 alone. Even so, there’s an argument that 2011 isn’t shaping up as “the year of the cord cutter” as originally forecast. A “cord cutter” is generally thought of not [...]
Starting on Monday, October 31, Redbox is raising its DVD rental prices from $1 to $1.20 per day. While a 20% increase is significant, we’re only talking about a price hike of a mere two dimes daily. Still, wouldn’t you rather keep that 20¢?
Blockbuster has had a miserable couple of years, closing thousands of movie rental stores, entering bankruptcy, and generally serving as one of the recession era’s biggest business flop stories. Now, though, as Netflix and Redbox—the movie-rental competitors that helped put Blockbuster on the ropes—are raising prices, Blockbuster sees an opening to get back in the [...]
The DVD rental kiosk service Redbox has been enormously successful at a time when much of the economy has struggled. The value and simplicity of Redbox’s product are prime reasons why business has been so good: a flat $1 for each day a DVD is rented. Customers had to know that one day, prices just [...]
Falling diaper sales and the mess at Netflix point up the risks that big banks are taking by boosting fees in a recessionary environment.
Less than a month after the name was circulated around the world, Netflix’s Hastings now says that, err, um, let’s pretend that whole Qwikster announcement never happened.
Increasingly, consumers just aren’t buying movies. Frustrated with the sales slowdown, movie studios are eager to find new ways of getting more money out of consumers.
