The End of an Era – Again

 It really shouldn’t be news to anyone that a lot of businesses have been having trouble during the current world-wide health crisis. Even if I were to tell you that the pandemic has driven an entire industry into extinction, you probably wouldn’t be surprised. But if I were to tell you that the industry in question was video rental stores, your reaction would more likely be: “There are still video retail stores?” Regrettably, the answer would appear to be: “Not anymore…”

Two stories appearing on the MSN.com site this week give an idea of where the economy is going these days, and the news isn’t very reassuring. First up, a story that originated in The Washington Post details bankruptcy effects in a number of industries during the last year, some of which have seen double or triple the number of Chapter 11 filings from the year before. Even more disturbing, though, is the corresponding rise in Chapter 7 filings. Companies can come back from Chapter 11, or at least make an effort to raise money, find backers, or sell off assets, but Chapter 7 means you’re not even trying to do anything more than liquidate the company and turn out the lights…

In the midst of all of the restaurants, retail stores, shared-space ventures, business incubators, entrepreneurial start-ups, and entertainment ventures that are going under (or at least circling the drain), you may have missed the story about Family Video, the last known multi-unit video rental company, having to shut down operations in January. Compared to behemoths like Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, Family Video was a relatively modest operation, but the fact that it was still in business years after all of the other chains were long gone suggests that their story might be worth a closer look…

According to the story which originated in Newsweek, Family Video managed to avoid the fate of companies like Blockbuster through a combination of strategies that included unconventional asset allocation, unrelated diversification, and selection of otherwise underserved markets – which is to say, purchasing the buildings in which their stores were located instead of renting them, building pizza stands into the same business space, and putting the stores into smaller communities where other forms of entertainment are limited and many residents can’t afford cable or satellite service. None of these are particularly complicated or innovative, but the fact that Family Video used them while their competitors did not goes a long way towards explaining why they were still operating in 2021 while their competition closed down years ago…

Now, I’m not suggesting that anyone should be upset at the demise of video rental stores, or the industry in general. Streaming video services are cheaper, more convenient, offer more viewing choices, and these days even produce their own exclusive content. There was never any real question that the days of any business requiring you to pick up and return physical media were limited from the day the first pay-per-view services appeared back in the 1990s. But as the linked article notes, this latest business failure is going to put another 5,000 or so people out of work, and eliminate one of the only entertainment options available, in a large number of communities that are already being hit by an economic disaster potentially as destructive as the health disaster currently ravaging much of the world…

When I think back to the days – not that long ago – when the big video rental chains were powerful enough to influence which movies and television programs got funded, or advertised heavily, it can be hard to believe that they’re gone now. But the same can be said about record stores (and, increasingly, bookstores), soda fountains, full-service gas stations, video arcades, fondue restaurants, resume writing services, and many others, and the world goes on without noticing or caring in the slightest. It makes you wonder what other common business types won’t be around in another ten years – and what world events will finish them off…

Best or Worst?

By now, any of my regular readers (assuming I have readers) must be aware that I spend a lot of time looking for products and organizations that have failed in amusing or instructive fashions – partly because I’m a business strategy teacher and a former failure analyst, and partly for my own amusement. To be fair, I have often brought you stories about the strange, bizarre and wonderful new ideas that turn up from time to time, some of which have actually lived up to the hype that their inventors and I have given them. This goes a long way toward explaining why the “Stupid” tag and the variations on the “Innovations” tag are so common on these posts. But much more infrequently, I will find a story online that might be either the smartest or the dumbest thing I have ever seen – or possibly both at once. Such was the case with the new movie theater design I read about today...

You can pick up the original story off the MSN home page if you want more detail, but the basic idea is that somebody decided to make a movie theater into an indoor playground. It’s got a typical screen and audio/visual equipment, but it also has a slide, a jungle gym, and various things to jump on, run around, and play with. They’re apparently going to include both conventional seating for adults (parents, one assumes) and kid-friendly seating areas like beanbag chairs and such. Since it’s difficult for smaller children to sit still and watch anything for two hours or more anyway, the people behind these facilities appear to have gone entirely the other way. Rather than trying to get people to be quiet and show respect for the other customers, they’re building a place where people can just let their kids do whatever they want…

Personally, I can’t think of any venue that would have less value for me, but then I don’t have (and do not ever expect to have) responsibility for any small children. I’m not the sort of person who takes children to age-inappropriate events, either, or at least I don’t think I am. Although I will concede that there are some people of my acquaintance who will never be able to watch a movie without annoying the crap out of everyone else in the building, and some of them are now well into middle age. But whatever the exact demographic of customers using these kid-friendly movie venues turns out to be, my strategy for dealing with them is simply not to go to any. The real question, from where I’m sitting, is what effect this will have on movie viewing experiences in other venues…

On the one hand, the existence of movie theaters in which the kids can run around and make all of the noise they want to might be a good thing. If we can convince any significant percentage of families with rambunctious children to go to such venues and leave the rest of us in peace, that could mean fewer disruptive children screaming and running around when we’re trying to watch a movie. On the other hand, I’m not sure that training people to assume that a given venue should make special provisions to accommodate their children is a good idea. It isn’t hard to imagine people who have grown up running wild in venues where they would normally be required to have some consideration for the other customers growing up to believe that they should always be allowed to do just as they like…

Of course, we should probably also concede that in recent years we have all witnessed increasing numbers of nominal adults who behave that way anyway. And we have already seen the appearance of movie theaters that do not tolerate any noise or disruption during the presentation, such as the Alamo Drafthouse organization, which does not permit very young children onto the premises at all. So maybe the idea of venues that serve the specific needs of a particular demographic group really is a brilliant idea; it might even be a way for this struggling industry to recover some of the market share it has lost to Blu-ray, DVRs, and Pay-Per-View/On-Demand cable services. Or perhaps this is the beginning of the end of movie-going as we know it…

I still can’t decide...

Something New?

I saw Guardians of the Galaxy last night – generally a good movie, and certainly no more difficult to accept than any other superhero film. If you’re going to have issues with tropes like everyone in the universe speaking American English, unmodified humans remaining unhurt after impacts that should have been instantly fatal, ships that can change directions in outer space the way aircraft do inside the atmosphere, weapons that randomly violate the laws of physics, or talking raccoons, I don’t know why you’d be going to see a movie like this in the first place. But when we consider the film as part of a larger business strategy, and in particular with the development of a new and remarkably powerful brand identity, I’m forced to conclude that all of the people heaping scorn on this production either don’t know or don’t care about business - or are missing the point…

If you aren’t familiar with what is generally known as the “Marvel Cinematic Universe,” the basic concept is that over the last decade or so Marvel Studios have been making superhero movies that all take place within the same reality, much the way their comic books traditionally do. Previously this approach had been extremely rare, possibly to help build dramatic tension – it’s hard to convince the audience that a given hero is the only one who can possibly defeat the bad guy and save the world if they know that Superman or Wolverine (depending on which universe we are in) could potentially show up and sort everything out. However, this convention prevented the use of one of the genre’s most interesting plot devices, and what is turning out to be a very successful marketing strategy…

Anyone with any significant exposure to the medium already knows that one of the most interesting features in any comic book series is what are generally called “crossover” episodes – when characters from one title show up in another, either as allies or antagonists. Like guest stars in a television series, or stunt casting in a movie, these appearances allow the writers to introduce plot elements and narrative possibilities beyond those present in the story’s base scenario, as well as connecting the story into a larger narrative picture. In the case of the Marvel imprint, this has allowed several of their recent movies and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. television series to contribute to the development of a single over-arching story, to which Guardians of the Galaxy is apparently connected (the film features antagonists featured in both the Avengers and Thor series). It has not yet been revealed how the characters in this new offering will fit into the larger picture, but it seems apparent that they will…

From a business standpoint, this same effect allows the Studio to draw on the fan base from multiple series of movies when they make a new feature – e.g. fans who don’t care about the other five main characters watched the Avengers movie because their favorite character was in it; the most recent Hulk movie gained support because it featured Tony Stark/Iron Man, and so on. Even better, it will draw viewers to offerings they care nothing about, because any given movie in the shared setting may have implications for the next sequel in a series they do follow. And meanwhile, every Marvel release gives the company an additional opportunity to display its logo and theme music at the start of the feature, and drive home the fact that their products are the ones you want to see…

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’re about to see the first major crossover movie from DC Comics, Marvel’s main competitor, only now that Marvel has demonstrated how well the concept works – especially when you consider that DC was actually the first to bring their superhero stories to the big screen, decades ago. I don’t know if the company’s rumored Justice League movie (their equivalent of the Avengers concept) will be successful, assuming it is more than a rumor, or if we will ever see the ultimate in crossover projects, featuring characters from both companies. For the moment, however, I think we can say that the concept appears to be working, even for movies featuring obscure superheroes no one (except for hardcore fans) has ever heard of before. Whether it will be enough to save a genuinely bad movie remains to be seen – but I’m not going to place any bets either way. As a true innovation in both A/V narrative and brand development, this concept has the potential to change everything…

Tell Me It Isn’t

In yesterday’s post I told you about the upcoming Disney movie based on the “It’s A Small World” ride; a project which has the potential to be either the best or the very worst thing ever to come out of Hollywood depending on your tolerance for cutesy and your need to keep small children entertained without resorting to cable television. As potentially horrifying as this might be, there was a note contained within the same Los Angeles Times article cited below that contains something far more disturbing, at least in its potential. The Times author notes that Six Flags Magic Mountain is going to dismantle the Colossus rollercoaster – and that this one-time monument to adrenaline is no longer in the top ten rides in any major category…

For those unfamiliar with the installation, the amusement park originally called simply “Magic Mountain” is located just north of Los Angeles along Interstate 5. It’s on the other side of Los Angeles from the various parks in Anaheim and the surrounding areas, and is thus two or three hours closer by car to a large percentage of the city’s residents. The park began with only a few rollercoasters, and relatively modest ones at that, but gradually added various other rides and attractions. When Colossus was introduced in 1978 it was the tallest and fastest wooden rollercoaster in the world, and the first to have drops of 100 feet or more. The park was purchased by Six Flags in 1979, and has since been expanded to include newer rides incorporating increasingly exotic technological elements. Meanwhile, larger and faster rides of various types have appeared in various facilities around the world…

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that Six Flags has any ethical, moral or historical responsibility to keep Colossus operating. It occupies an enormous amount of highly valuable real estate – over ten acres – and if the company can find a more productive and/or lucrative use for that space, one could argue that they have a fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders to do just that. What I find troubling about these events is the ongoing drive for faster, scarier and more extreme rides, and the corresponding increase in the number of adrenaline junkies demanding that manufacturers and park owners continue pushing the limits on ride performance. I have to ask, where does it end?

Once something becomes commonplace it loses whatever appeal it may have had by virtue of being unfamiliar, unexpected, or just extraordinary, and therefore is no longer a selling point. In management theory this phenomenon is the basis for the Resource-Based View of the firm (RBV), which states that in order to offer the company a competitive advantage a given asset must be valuable, rare, difficult to imitate, and difficult to substitute for. In the case of the rollercoaster market, once there are higher, faster and/or scarier rides than Colossus, it is no longer a draw for the park and should probably be replaced with something that does give Magic Mountain an edge over the competition. But while this makes perfect sense from a business standpoint, I can’t help worrying about the human costs involved…

Once you’ve traveled down a 100-foot drop at 62 miles per hour it’s harder to get excited by a ride traveling half that distance at two-thirds of that speed. So the competition might respond with something that drops 120 feet at 70 miles per hour, forcing Magic Mountain to create something that drops 140 feet while traveling at 75 miles per hour while upside-down – and the cycle continues until we reach the state of the art in terms of what can be built or what the riders can survive. I have no scientific evidence to suggest that this process makes the people who ride such installations edgy, impatient, or hard to keep focused, but it seems possible that the decrease in attention spans that everyone keeps bemoaning might have something to do with a culture that places ever greater importance on high levels of excitement at all times. Speaking as an educator, this worries me…

I’m not saying there’s a direct causal relationship between these stimuli and a fall-off in attention spans, patience and good behavior among the members of the key demographic groups to whom rollercoasters are marketed. But I would very much like it if somebody could tell me there isn’t…

Don’t Even Try

Quick, think of the most preposterous choice for a new movie project that could ever come out of Hollywood or anywhere else. This may be harder than you think, considering some of the recent choices. It’s not just that we’ve had movies based on board games (Battleship) and Disneyland rides (Haunted Mansion), it’s that some of those have actually been good (Clue) or at least commercially successful (Pirates of the Caribbean I, II and III). We can assume that anything that ever made money will be remade, but that’s hardly surprising after remakes like the Total Recall remake and the upcoming remake of Top Gun, not to mention the inevitable Godzilla and Dawn of the Dead remakes. Given the appearance of the “Brony” community (look it up) I can’t even say that a rumored My Little Pony live-action blockbuster is all that amazing. But until it is given to me to see an actual press release for a Candyland live-action adventure, I have to go with the upcoming It’s a Small World movie as taking the prize…

You can check out the original story on the Los Angeles Times site if you’d like, but unless someone is pranking the Times (and us, one assumes) there is a project in development to make a live-action movie about a Disney ride in which you travel through an air-conditioned building while dolls in “traditional” costume from around the world sing an endlessly recursive tune. It isn’t clear if there’s a script yet, but a director has been hired to helm the project – it’s Jon Turteltaub, the man responsible for the National Treasure movies. How exactly you go from action/adventure movies featuring Nicholas Cage and lots of explosions to hanging a story around something Walt Disney specifically designed for little girls is not explained – and may be inexplicable – but that’s what appears to be happening…

Now, I will be the first to admit that I’ve never written or directed a successful screenplay of any kind. The people I know who have done so will tell you that it’s even harder than it looks, and the quality of the production, the acting and the story actually have nothing to do with either the critical or the commercial success of the film. Sadly, it’s not only possible for an artist to spend the best years of his or her life crafting a cinematic masterpiece only to see it ignored by the public and criticized by various hack reviewers, this happens more than it doesn’t. After a while, the urge to go directly after projects that already have a popular following – either because they are sequels to an already successful movie or because their about something else that already has fans has to become overpowering. And given that the original version of Small World in Anaheim has had roughly 290,000,000 visitors (that’s 111,000 a week for over 50 years) it seems probable that there are people who already love the concept…

If you’ve been to the movies in recent years, or watched anything reported about motion pictures, or even spent time around people who care about the state of modern cinema, you’ve probably heard the rant about how Hollywood needs to start making better movies if they want people to start going to movie theaters again. And to some extent this is absolutely true – but it is also true that the studios keep making the same repackaged crap over and over again because that is what people will pay to see. If you personally want to do something about the state of motion picture entertainment, then go see an art film, a smart biopic, a period piece or a clever original thriller, while you still can! You can always catch the Candyland movie later, if you need something to complain about…

The Ethics of Emotional Trauma

There’s an interesting case that’s sprung up around the most recent Sea World fatality. I’ve written in this space about the human resources aspects of having one of your star attractions – which happens to be an eight-ton killer whale – casually kill one of your employees, and the ethics of having puny humans swimming around in the orca tank in the first place. This case, however, has been filed by some of the customers affected by the accident – specifically, by a family who says that their children were traumatized by having to witness the brutal killing…


You can pick up the story from the the MSNBC website if you’d like, but the basic idea is that the Connell family from New Hampshire were watching when the trainer was killed, and their young son has been permanently traumatized by the spectacle. The Connells are suing for a very large amount of cash, while the company is trying to defend themselves by noting that if this litigation is allowed to go forward, anyone who every witnesses any traumatic event in any public venue will be able to sue the venue, the people involved in the event, anyone who made or installed equipment in the venue, advertisers who carried ads about the event or the venue, or the relevant government which failed to sufficiently regulate the venue. To me, of course, it seems more like a question of ethics – or rather, a series of questions…


First of all, does an entertainment venue like Sea World have an obligation to prevent any visitor from seeing anything that might upset them? Granted that seeing a human being get killed by an animal is rather extreme, this is still a slippery slope; there is no way to be certain what sights will or will not traumatize any specific visitor, and having every customer sign a waiver seems impractical. Clearly, when you take your family to look at animals, there will always be some risk of the animals behaving in some unpleasant, frightening or disgusting manner – can you reasonably expect the owners to sanitize every possible aspect of a zoo or aquarium?


Secondly, how badly does someone have to be emotionally traumatized before you can sue over the event, and who gets to decide that? Leaving it to an industry of paid expert witnesses doesn’t really sound like it would be in the public interest, but just letting anybody who wants to sue for whatever they like is clearly impractical as well. Do two mauling episodes equal one drowning by an orca? What about three smaller fish being eaten by a larger fish? Alpha males fighting with Beta males? And if you do permit such actions to go forward, should the family be allowed to sue for punitive damages and emotional pain and suffering, or just the cost of the affected members’ therapy bill? For that matter, would the kid even need therapy if the parents didn’t keep dredging up this episode over and over, or would he have gone on to other heartbreak by now?


Granted that in the case where any customer has been materially harmed or damaged by any action of the company, deliberate or negligent, they have a right to sue for compensation and the company has a duty to make them whole, does that apply to every upsetting experience you will ever have with that firm? For that matter, should every company be allowed to display disturbing, upsetting, disgusting or traumatizing spectacles without any potential consequence, or should they be held accountable for what goes on in their facilities, whether they intended those displays or not?


It’s worth thinking about…

New Theme Park

There’s a wonderful moment in the recent “Iron Man” film, where the hero’s personal assistant walks in on him as he’s having trouble getting out of the armor that serves as the centerpiece of the movie (and the comic series). Most of the earlier iterations of the Iron Man myth have avoided dealing with this, but a suit of armor (even sealed, flying power armor with its own life-support systems and weapons and such) isn’t just a single piece of machinery; it wouldn’t just clamshell open and let you walk in. Real armor, throughout history, has been a collection of components fitted to different parts of the body for different functions, and it’s unrealistic to suggest that the Iron Man armor would be something you just pull on like a cotton jumpsuit. But in the scene our hero is hanging in mid-air, as a bunch of robotic arms attempt to disengage him from the different bits of ironmongery, and his assistant gasps at the sight…

Which leads to one of the film’s best moments, when our hero looks at her, and replies: “Oh, come on! This isn’t even the worst thing you’ve caught me doing!”

This was precisely my reaction when I learned that a genuine UFO cult is planning on building an alien-based theme park and “Happiness Academy” in Las Vegas. As reported by the local CBS affiliate, the well-known nut cult that calls themselves the Raelians is planning on constructing a new facility, including a museum, lecture facility, full-scale replica of a UFO and whatever else a “Happiness Academy” would entail in Las Vegas, starting sometime within the next year…

Anywhere else in the world, this announcement would no doubt be greeted with all manner of public protest. There would be denouncements from local religious groups, calling the Raelians “a dangerous cult” that was obviously created by the devil to distract their members from whatever their particular dogma happens to be. There would be complaints from local business groups about the masses of weirdos that will be attracted to such a facility scaring off paying customers. There would probably be protests and counter-protests about separation of Church and State, the need for various levels of government to intervene in (or stay out of) the situation. Local politicians would scent which way the wind was blowing, and try to gain advantage by taking whatever position about the new theme park seemed politically expedient…

In Las Vegas, the reaction seems to have been more along the lines of people asking if the city really needs another UFO cult and its theme park; if the ones they already have can handle the traffic; or if this one will just make it harder for the existing facilities to pay their bills. I mean, sure, everyone’s happy to see new businesses opening up these days, what with the economic crisis and all, and Las Vegas could certainly benefit from some new construction jobs and real estate getting sold, but you have to think of the long-term effects of a new installation…

I kid, of course, but given how hard the city has worked to cultivate that image of “anything goes” it’s difficult to imagine how having the Raelians build a tourist attraction somewhere in the area will do anyone any harm, and if they actually have money to spend (or, more to the point, if they can actually attract any tourists with money to spend) the whole thing could be really good for the community, at least from a business standpoint. Assuming that the whole thing doesn’t turn out to be another heap of smoke and mirrors, like when the Raelians claimed to have successfully cloned one of their key leaders, that is. It’s a sad day when you can’t even trust the leaders of your local UFO cult anymore. Sometimes I fear for the future of our Republic…