Slow Fade-Out for Video Stores

Blockbuster's bankruptcy last week has made it official: Technology is killing the video-rental store -- and a piece of American culture with it.

Since the first video-rental shops emerged in the late 1970s, they have served as shrines to films and created new social spaces for neighborhoods, often reflecting their personalities. They drew cinephiles, rebellious teens seeking movies of which their parents might not approve, and budding young actors and directors who canonized them in their work. The shops made accessible high quality films, or quirky or foreign ones, that weren't likely to be broadcast on TV—and on customers' own schedules. Brought down off the silver screen, movies were artifacts people could swap, study and recommend. A generation of movie buffs and cultural critics collected copies of films the same way art and books were amassed. But new movie-delivery methods have made bricks-and-mortar stores obsolete. In 1998, Netflix started shipping DVDs to consumers at home. Cable companies expanded their on-demand movie offerings, making it easier to find a movie from the couch. In 2007, there were 16,237 video-rental stores in the country, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, down from 23,036 in 1997.