oct 19, 1985 - BlockBuster
Description:
On October 19th 1985 David Cook founded the company Blockbuster. Blockbuster was a chain of short term rental shops for videos, cassettes and DVDs.
The first Blockbuster store opened in Dallas Texas in 1985. Blockbuster was very successful as before, rental shops were small and had very little films to rent. The first Blockbuster store had approximately 8000 films to offer and it quickly expanded with Cook opening three more stores over the next year and by 1988 Blockbuster was America's biggest video chain with around 400 stores. By the early 1990s Blockbuster opened it 1000th store including stores worldwide.
However, as Blockbusters success was high Netflix and Amazon Prime were introduced as online streaming services. This meant that Blockbuster customers were decreasing. Attempting to compete, Blockbuster launched their own online service in 2004. This however was not enough to save Blockbuster as it declared bankruptcy in 2010 and ceased operation in 2013.
I think Blockbuster was extremely important to the development of tv and film as it allowed people to watch more films as they were easily accessible because they could watch them from their homes instead the cinemas.
Sources:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-blockbuster-store-opens
Added to timeline:
Development of TV and Film
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