It's the end of an era for Blockbuster stores. The company announced this past week that it would end its retail operations and its DVD's by mail by early January.
Now, we're finding out about the impact on Rochester area stores. The remaining Blockbuster stores, at Monroe and Goodman in Rochester, East Ridge Road in Irondequoit and Mount Read Boulevard in Greece will have their last day for rentals on Saturday. The stores will close to the public on Sunday, and then reopen late next week for a closeout sale. The three stores will be selling DVD's, video games and other items and it's expected they'll be open for those sales until sometime in January.
Resident Scholar in Media at Saint John Fisher , Tom Proietti, says there are still some people who want to rent DVD's, but not many.
"Some people still, not unlike using phone books and yellow pages , this is a residual, cleaning up the end of the business, and I'm surprised they lasted until 2013. "
The CEO for Dish Network, which purchased Blockbuster two years ago, said that this was not an easy decision, but that consumer demand is clearly moving to digital distribution of video entertainment.
