Josh Fuld– Author Of Bran­don Sparks & The Hid­den Sun , as well as a reg­u­lar caller and con­trib­u­tor to the show, wrote this very thought-out post regard­ing Blockbuster’s poten­tial demise and how they can evolve and improve with a new strat­egy. Have a look and share your thoughts. I per­son­ally think his sug­ges­tions are very sound and have the poten­tial to save this sto­ried franchise.

Block­buster, The Future of Entertainment?

There are thou­sands of Block­buster stores around the world that have become dinosaurs. They focus on movie and game rentals and sell movies at full retail. I believe that by har­ness­ing the power of the Block­buster brand and the fact that they have excel­lent cov­er­age nation­ally, Block­buster stores and Blockbuster.com could eas­ily become your favorite place to con­sume entertainment.

1. Blockbuster.com is a very pop­u­lar site. Yes it is not nearly as pop­u­lar as Net­flix, but that is not impor­tant. Blockbuster.com has a huge cus­tomer base and they need to revamp the sys­tem so that their cus­tomer base can pur­chase items at Block­buster retail stores using their online account. How do they do this? Read on…
2. Video kiosks (ala Jet Blue check in) should be set up in every store. Kiosks should be easy to use, have large screens and allow the cus­tomer to watch thou­sands of movie trail­ers, behind the scenes clips, as well as rent and pur­chase any item in the store. Users can log in to their Blockbuster.com accounts and pay using the credit card (or pay­pal) they have stored online, or they can pay at the reg­is­ter. The goal here is to com­bine the func­tion­al­ity and ease of shop­ping on the Inter­net with the instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion of hav­ing what you want right now.
3. Kiosk will print out a receipt with a num­ber. An employee will pick order and num­ber will be called out. Employee will ver­ify order vs receipt from kiosk. This is the same sys­tem chain restau­rants use, like Green Cac­tus or Baja Fresh.
4. Employee’s will pick all of the mer­chan­dise for the cus­tomer? How will this work? Block­buster will remove all (or most) of the phys­i­cal inven­tory from the store and put it all behind the counter. Video games and movies take up very lit­tle room, and extra stock could be kept in a back room along with larger items, such as video game con­soles and Tivos. Block­buster could adjust their inven­tory so instead of hav­ing 50 copies of Breakin’ 2: Elec­tric Booga­loo, they could have two copies in stock and reorder when needed.
5. What is Block­buster going to do with all of the freed up space? I’m glad you asked. They are going to enter­tain you. All of the walls will be cov­ered with large flat panel TVs that will broad­cast Block­buster News, a one-hour, daily review of every­thing going on in the world of movies, tv and video games. They will have video game con­soles with the newest releases so that you can play them. You get the picture.
6. Why would any­one use Net­flix when there will be Block­buster by Mail? If you already par­tic­i­pate in Blockbuster’s all you can eat rental pro­gram, you will be given an enve­lope with your order at check­out to mail in your rentals. If you are not part of this pro­gram, for a small fee, you can buy an enve­lope. This will save you an annoy­ing trip back to the store and Block­buster gets a lit­tle extra change for mak­ing your life easier.
7. What’s the best way to get more traf­fic into Block­buster store? Cheap new releases. In order to get more traf­fic, Block­buster should offer new release DVDs and Blu-rays at sig­nif­i­cant dis­count. This would be sim­i­lar to Best Buy’s Tues­day flyer pro­gram, but the movie’s should be cheaper. This will estab­lish Block­buster as the place to get new movies. Why let Best Buy dom­i­nate? Once Block­buster is get­ting more traf­fic, and peo­ple expe­ri­ence the new Block­buster, they are more likely to sign up for the rental program.
8. Have you ever been inside a Game Stop? It’s like going to a flea mar­ket. The employ­ees try to push prod­uct on you that you don’t want and try to scare you into their pre-order pro­gram. Why would a per­son ever shop at a Game Stop when they could expe­ri­ence the new Blockbuster?
9. Speak­ing of Game Stop, one way that Block­buster could really increase their traf­fic is by set­ting up a used game pro­gram. Game Stop pays next to noth­ing for games. Why not offer a lit­tle more as well as spe­cial dis­count and reward pro­grams for peo­ple who buy and sell used games. It seems like a no brainer.

Block­buster needs to trans­form itself from a place that rents movies to an enter­tain­ment des­ti­na­tion where peo­ple come for their enter­tain­ment news and to fully immerse them­selves in entertainment.

My Take Radio would like to con­grat­u­late the New York Yan­kees on their 27th World Series Cham­pi­onship.  As a fan of NY sports it’s great to see us get one more championship.

(Please note that I sup­port almost all NY teams with the excep­tion of the Knicks.)

Image Credit-Yahoo Sports

A Note From Rich-My other half decided to share her thoughts on comic con.

Enjoy her take

10. The kiosk hot dogs smell like stinky feet cheese.…please don’t eat them for fear of the H1N1 Virus…

9. We arrived late and missed Ric Flair.…for that we got The Bushwack­ers instead…BOO! Les­son learned: Go early next time.

8. Candice Michelle from WWE (oops not any more) is as annoy­ing IRL as she appears on tv…and her clothes do not match…

7. I found out that porn stars like Naughty By Nature because they put on a good show and per­form like they are on tour. Also, I made a men­tal note that their “line of busi­ness” appar­ently makes you sound like a 2 year old with high lev­els helium in their body, and makes me want to rip my ears off.

6. Thomas Jane’s pen­man­ship is that of a preschooler writ­ing with his/her feet using a paintbrush…and he is indeed a lunatic.

5. Dear Douchebag at the Twi­light table: EPIC FAIL for try­ing to tell me Chris­t­ian Ser­ratos was Kris­ten Stew­art as if I didn’t watch the movie 3 times. That my friend makes you an ass­hole — a blind one at that…so STFU before I power­bomb you through a table.

4.  Linda Hamil­ton likes touch­ing fans… to quote her”“It’s all about the con­nec­tion, man. I can’t keep my hands off these peo­ple,” Hamil­ton said. “
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/10/18/2009–10-18_geeks_unite_on_pier_94_in_manhattan_for_big_apple_comic_con.html#ixzz0UmpUfx8v

3. Women think that a super­hero cos­tume auto­mat­i­cally makes them look sexy, no mat­ter what. I think I actu­ally saw the Green Arrow’s cos­tume seams scream­ing in agony for help. Oh, and if it is a male char­ac­ter, PLEASE DO NOT MAKE IT A WOMAN’S COSTUME!!! It doesn’t make sense!!!

2. . It is a pre­req­ui­site to have at least one Impe­r­ial Storm Trooper present at all con­ven­tions. Appar­ently Emperor Pal­pa­tine has stock in Wizard.

1. I want the Bat­mo­bile for Christmas…and the site accepts Pay­pal. Do the math.

I should have made this post at the same time Slick made his but I didn’t get a chance to. I now present you with the 10 things I learned at the Big Apple Con.

10.Bathrooms at comic con­ven­tions are the worst known to man.I’d com­pare them to a bath­room at Penn Stattion

9.Dear fat kids please wear cos­tumes fit­ting your body type. Last time I check Venom could see his toes with­out suck­ing in his gut

8. Girls some­times make bet­ter male char­ac­ters then guys.

7.Thomas Jane has a potty mouth lol and he’s fuck­ing nuts.

6. For­mer play­boy mod­els, wrestling divas and b-movie babes all wear tight clothes and have leath­ery look­ing skin.

5. I can sneak up on Lou Fer­rigno and yell in his bad ear that he’s a douche and get away with it.

4. Virgil/ Vin­cent from WWE/WCW is a very nice guy

3. Pete Rose is a douche and Kane should find him at every show and choke slam him lol.

2.Comic Swag has really fallen off.

1.Hygiene is optional at comic con now a days. Noth­ing says nerds & geeks like cornchips and butt cheeks

I usu­ally use this web­site to dis­cuss show top­ics and inform my audi­ence of upcom­ing shows and news. I some­times for­get that this is my blog and that some­times there are big­ger things out there other than new games,movies, wrestling and MMA. Not that those aren’t big since they are my inter­ests as well as the inter­ests of my listeners,but right now I want to talk about some­thing that is very close to me and has affected me every­day of my life for the last 9 years. That my friends is the almighty breast can­cer which took my mother from me in 2000. The grav­ity of this dis­ease is huge. How huge you ask? Here are some stats:

Aside from non-melanoma skin can­cer, breast can­cer is the most com­mon form of can­cer in women. Breast can­cer is the num­ber one cause of can­cer death in His­panic women. It is the sec­ond most com­mon cause of can­cer death in white, black, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Amer­i­can Indian/Alaska Native women.

In 2005 (the most recent year num­bers are available)—

• 186,467 women were diag­nosed with breast cancer.
• 41,116 women  from breast cancer.

These num­bers come straight from CDC.gov

I’ll be hon­est and say that there are plenty of things killing peo­ple out there and I am sure they have advo­cates to fight for them but this cause has great sig­nif­i­cance to me.

On the real for 9 years I dreaded Octo­ber and the color pink that pre­sented itself every month because it was a ter­ri­ble reminder that I lost my great­est hero and sup­porter. I hated every ad and every com­mer­cial and the fact that new advance­ments were mov­ing along albeit slowly angered me more with each pass­ing year. This brings me to today where while I am still bit­ter on the inside have accepted what the Susan Komen foun­da­tion and count­less oth­ers are try­ing to do and that’s save women’s lives, raise aware­ness and give hope to those that are bat­tling this ill­ness. I am sure that there are thou­sands of fam­i­lies that have lost a mom, daughter,grandmother,aunt  and feel like I do but have moved on. I guess for me it became my per­sonal vendetta with some­thing I can’t fight physically.

It dawned on me over the last few weeks as I read count­less twit­ter posts and mes­sages of peo­ple sup­port­ing the fight against can­cer that I real­ized that I was not alone in want­ing my voice to be heard and that oth­ers felt like I did.

I ask those of you with women in your lives to advise them to have mam­mo­grams and get exam­ined annu­ally. If they feel some­thing weird inside a boob to see a doc­tor ASAP. My mom sadly waited to long and had to endure a mas­tec­tomy since her tumor was the size of a grape­fruit. Some­thing like this can be pre­vented! I kick myself some­times for not push­ing her sooner to get it checked out but I was kid that had no idea what was happening.

I think that the web besides being the place for porn and other mind­less enter­tain­ment is also a forum for change and if we all do our part no mat­ter how big or small we’ll even­tu­ally be heard.

I’ll end my post here since I am sure I have made some of you sad or oth­er­wise emo­tional but I’ll end it with this

Beat Breast Cancer!!

If you need help for some­one who has been diag­nosed or want to sup­port aware­ness  go straight to the source folks which is the Susan G. Komen for the cure or visit Live­strong or any of your favorite char­i­ties to help make a difference.

My Take Radio sup­ports breast can­cer aware­ness month