With all the madness surrounding the PSN outage and the excitement of the NBA playoffs we had almost forgotten about the Dish Network acquisition of Blockbuster. Well, Dish has made its first move in rebuilding the Blockbuster brand by offering three months of free Blockbuster By Mail. But there’s a hitch.
The 3 free months are only for new Dish Network customers. Huh? Why wouldn’t Dish offer this to existing customers who may be using Netflix but would be enticed to switch to Blockbuster for the free months? Customers who switch may even stay with Blockbuster for the simple reason they get movies a month before other rental services.
You might also ask, “What about Blockbuster on demand?” Blockbuster was a household brand (and still is in many places) but the ease and practicality of streaming movies from Netflix and its competitors will eventually blast traditional disc rental chains into oblivion. Blockbuster needs to be one of those competitors who offer streaming movies under a subscription plan and get into the race before it’s too late.
UPDATE: As if on cue, The Associated Press released an interview with new Dish Network CEO Joe Clayton. He offered these fighting for Netflix:
“”If I were them, I’d be watching what’s going on. “I’d stay tuned. Because no one’s going to have a monopoly on this and I’m sure it’s not just our company that’s looking at trying to take a small piece of the pie from Netflix.”
Related article: Netflix vs. Blockbuster – Why is Netflix winning?
that would probably cost too much. they prob cant afford all the shipping costs. netflix also wants to dump shipping costs.