I'm not surprised that Blockbuster is in free fall

[Spike89]

33. There was no path for Blockbuster

The entire concept of Blockbuster, from the large, brightly lit stores in 1000s of strip malls, to a somewhat sleek catalog (compared to "indy" stores) was built on beating every other video store. But even if the Blockbuster board had grabbed Netflix technology a decade ago--they'd have still just killed off their chain.

It costs lots of money to have actual stores with actual inventory and employees in those stores...that huge overhead couldn't be dropped, and it made them unable to compete with low-overhead options (Red-box) and even lower-overhead Netflix.

Record stores are pretty much gone now too, and there isn't a thing they could have done to keep a physical presence relevant.