Blockbuster Is a Bust?

So, Blockbuster, as we all know, had to go into bankruptcy after spending a decade posting quarter after quarter of losses, totaling over $10 billion, as Netflix and Redbox ate it alive. It was like watching a bad horror movie.

But, like a bad drama, Blockbuster had the chance to come back. Netflix has been reeling from the whole price rise and Qwikster debacle, and that left an opening for a streaming video service to step in and take a whole load of customers away. If it was going to happen, Friday was the day.

It didn’t happen.

The big problem with the “Stream Come True” and can we just say that that is a profoundly disgusting title for an event, is that it isn’t any sort of dream come true, for anybody. It’s just Netflix, only with a different name and the streaming options are, well, terrible.

For example, Netflix offers, with its streaming plan, approximately 10,000 movies, and just secured some major Hollywood content. In fact, it leapfrogged HBO in a big, big way by landing an exclusive deal with Dreamworks Animation. Blockbuster streaming, by contrast, offers…3000 movies.

Oh, and none of them are new releases. A lot of them are, in fact, available on Netflix.

Not that most people will care, since it’s only available to the 14 million Dish Network subscribers. Yes, they figured out a way to make this even less relevant: limit it to a subsection of the American populace for no explicable reason. We’re not really sure why this was put into effect: presumably it’s to allow further differentation of the service at a later date…but why wait? Why roll this out if it wasn’t ready?

In short, once again, Blockbuster has tripped over itself and handed Netflix a victory. And this one Netflix didn’t even ask for.