A wave of video store closures across Canada has recently swept up Videomatica, a beloved institution in Vancouver for nearly 30 years.
A legendary source of hard-to-find foreign, classic, and independent films, Videomatica was known not only in Vancouver but across the country, with renters as far away as Newfoundland. Some say the store is among the best in the world.
Co-owner Brian Bosworth says he had seen a decrease in video rentals since 2008, which he blames on technological and societal shifts.
“People think it’s Netflix that did us in, and did in video stores, but there was a decline in the video rental business in Canada way before that, and a steeper decline in the U.S,” he says.
A combination of online streaming, video-on-demand, satellite delivery, and even regular television were all “straws on the camel’s back” that eroded video rental profits irreversibly, Bosworth says.
But smaller independent stores are not the only ones to take the hit. Mega chains such as Blockbuster, Movie Gallery, and Rogers have seen profits plummet in recent years. Rogers has already closed 74 stores across the country, and reported a retail-related loss of $38 million in its most recent annual statement.
Rogers spokesperson Marina Guy says the company still plans to continue selling traditional home entertainment offerings “as long as it makes sense.”
U.S.-based Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy and closed 3,000 stores before being bought by satellite TV company Dish Network in April, 2011. Blockbuster Canada, which operates independently of the U.S. stores, announced it was going into receivership on May 6, 2011.
By August 2010 Movie Gallery, the second biggest movie and game rental company in the U.S. after Blockbuster, had closed and liquidated all its stores on both sides of the border.
Bosworth believes Internet culture is also to blame for the way society views renting movies. He says people now expect everything to be free or very cheap, and instantaneous. And the accessibility of Internet entertainment is taking up the time people used to make for watching movies.
But this may be leaving large gaps in entertainment choice—one that cannot be filled by the current online offerings.
“Every time there’s a shift in the technology there’s less actual product, and it becomes more new-release mainstream oriented. So there’s a ton of stuff out on DVD that I don’t think people will ever be able to get online, but the fact is they won’t know that they’re not getting it,” he says.
“Really the story here is not a video store closing. There’s cultural, political, social, and economic issues that are really, really big.”
Owners of Blackdog Video, a local Vancouver independent rental chain that is also facing a potential closure at one of its two locations, posted this blog entry:
“Where will one be able to find obscure films, classic films, foreign flicks and documentaries? There will be an entire generation that will know nothing of film history. All they will know is big Hollywood fare. And that makes me sad and scared.”
Bosworth says the ubiquitous world of streaming video means companies ultimately have the power to choose which titles can exist online, and only the movies that have enough market demand will get chosen, and then are only available temporarily. He predicts this will have a large impact on what types of movies are made in the first place, seriously limiting consumer choice.
“The narrowing of what’s available is definitely going to have an impact on culture,” he says. “I think our collection is going to be worth more in five years than it is now, just because of the narrowing.”
Bosworth and his business partner, Graham Peat, hope to sell their collection to a cultural or educational institution accessible to the public in order to “keep some small part of Videomatica alive.”
