After a long and painful struggle against Redbox DVD rental kiosks and Netflix’s mail order DVD rental service, Blockbuster has finally been forced to take action to alleviate the pressures of slumping DVD sales. The movie rental company will close down as many as 1,560 of its 3,750 retail stores, after having previously stated that it would close down 1,000.
 
According to Blockbuster, closing down so many of its stores will save the company around $26 million in working capital as it will allow Blockbuster to avoid pricey leasing fees for its brick-and-mortar stores. Companies like Redbox and Netflix are able …read more

You may have a Redbox kiosk near you, and if you do, you may have taken advantage of Redbox’s outrageously cheap DVD rentals, at $1.00 per night. However, several movie studios have expressed their outrage at Redbox, stating that the company is singlehandedly causing DVD sales to decline, and Fox Studios has even gone so far as to try to get its DVDs pulled from Redbox kiosks.
According to Adams Media Research, studio revenue from selling DVDs to retailers and rental outlets has fallen from $12.9 billion to $850 million over a year’s time, signaling the dire straits that the DVD …read more

Walt Disney Co. has not managed to avoid being ravaged by the recession, as the global media giant had posted a third-quarter profit drop of 26 percent. Thanks to the recession, less and less people are able to visit Disney’s massively popular theme parks and fewer advertisers are able to spend money.
 
Due to Disney’s significant drop in profits, the company’s film studio has posted a loss for the third quarter, while the main company’s net income has fallen to $954 million from $1.28 billion a year earlier. Sales also declined 7 percent to $8.6 billion, significantly missing the $8.81 billion …read more