Redbox to bring movie-rental kiosks to Canada

Is this now the time for libraries to really get in the book/DVD kiosk game?

Hundreds of red movie-rental kiosks will appear in stores across the country in the coming months as U.S.-based Redbox expands into Canada, as the chain looks to take advantage of the vacuum left by the closure of traditional retail stores.
Redbox has just signed deals with Wal-Mart Canada and national convenience store operator Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. to place its kiosks in stores across the country. The Oakbrook, Ill., company, a unit of Coinstar Inc., has almost 30,000 rental kiosks across the United States.

 

 

“[Canada] is the third largest DVD rental country after America and Japan,” said interim president Gregg Kaplan, speaking at an investment conference last week. “But at the same time, there is a bit of a void there. “As you might know, Blockbuster Canada and Rogers Video have either already exited or have announced that they’re going to exit. So the brick-and-mortar retailers are already out.”
There has been a vacuum in the estimated $1-billion Canadian DVD rental industry since Blockbuster Canada was pushed into receivership last year. More than 400 stores were closed across the country as a result, and Rogers Communications Inc. announced earlier this year it would also stop offering movie rentals in its stores.
The combination of streaming video services such as Netflix and rental kiosks devastated the U.S. video store industry over the past decade – stores’ market share for rentals and sales fell to about 20 per cent, according to Convergence Consulting Group.
There are some kiosks already operating in Canada. Zip.ca has about 100 kiosks in grocery stores, and electronics retailer Best Buy wants to double its machines – which are typically found in Western Canadian convenience stores – to 130 by the end of the year.
But the services were never seriously marketed in Canada and face content licensing difficulties that have diluted their offerings. Sixty per cent of all movie rental sales in Canada last year took place when someone walked into a store and grabbed a movie off the shelf, according to Convergence Consulting Group in a recent study.
“We feel like Canada now is ripe to do this and we feel like it’s time for us to go there in addition to what we’re doing in the U.S,” Mr. Kaplan said. “And given that there’s already a couple of kiosk competitors and the brick-and-mortar folks have exited, the time is right ... we don’t want to lose that opportunity.”
Mr. Kaplan wants to see about 2,500 kiosks in Canada within the “next few years,” but said the company will initially focus on Vancouver and Toronto.
“Historically, a pretty good rule of thumb, what we’ve seen in other businesses is that Canada can get to roughly 1/10 the size of the U.S. market,” Mr. Kaplan said. “We’re not projecting that yet because we haven’t had the experience there, but it feels like it could be sizable.”
The company’s self-serve kiosks will charge Canadians $1.50 for a standard definition new releases or $2 for a Blu-ray. Video games will also be offered, at $2.50.
“We set the price points at a level where we think we can get similar demand and profitability,” Mr. Kaplan said. “The brick-and-mortar competitors, when they were there, were at U.S. kinds of levels. So $4 or $5.”

 

Margaret Sutherland’s nude Stephen Harper painting on display at Kingston library

By Jordana Divon | Daily Brew – 1 hour 20 minutes ago

Margaret Sutherland's painting of a nude Stephen Harper is getting a lot of attention at the Kingston Library.

Stephen Harper often gets stripped down for his policies, but a Kingston-based artist has taken that idea to literal heights.

As the Kingston Whig-Standard reports, Margaret Sutherland has achieved a procession of popping eyeballs over her portrait of our Prime Minister reclining in the altogether, gaze both wan and provocative, as a headless woman in a power suit hands him a cup of Timmy's coffee on a silver platter.
Endowed with the title "Emperor Haute Couture," the nude was submitted to the Kingston Arts Council's 11th Annual Juried Art Salon.
It now hangs on display at the Kingston Frontenac Public Library's central branch in a room used for meetings and the occasional children's recital — although the portrait does get removed before any tiny fingers hit those piano keys.
Sutherland said her painting is a satirical take on Edouard Manet's iconic Olympia, the French impressionist's 1863 masterpiece of a nude Venus-like woman attended to by a slave.
"It's a political satire of a contemporary political figure," she told QMI Agency. "A classic pose using a contemporary figure."
This is far from the first time Sutherland has dabbled in nudes, but perhaps the first time her work keeps getting reshuffled for the sake of public decency.
Chief librarian Patricia Enbright told the Whig-Standard she faced a difficult decision when it came to balancing artistic expression and parental concern.
"[I]t was trying to balance the needs of many stakeholders in terms of the room. And yes, while we do support kind of intellectual freedom, we were also kind of in a very difficult position because of the multi-use of the room," she said.
A paltry excuse, complained a "ticked off" Sutherland on the Kingstonist website.
"I've now provided them with a cloth to cover the painting to lessen the chances they will damage it taking it down and putting it who knows where to sit who knows how long. However, with this kind of behaviour I have little confidence they will actually use it," Sutherland wrote in a comment underneath a story about the show.
Neither paper reached Harper to ask his impressions of the piece, but this sort of artistic licence featuring political privates didn't go over very well last March, when NOW magazine stuck Toronto mayor Rob Ford's head on a portly, bare-chested, boxer-clad body.
The Star notes that City Hall demanded all issues be "removed and disposed" immediately, ensuring, of course, that the cover would go down in Toronto media history.
So far, the Harper camp hasn't exhibited the same squeamishness. Barring the children's recital schedule, the Emperor will remain on display until May 29.
And if you'd like the portrait to adorn your private walls, it can be all yours for a cool $5,000.
(Photo courtesy of Margaret Sutherland)

 

The future of books is looking very bright this week

Barnes & Noble has joined up with Microsoft (NSQ:MSFT) to form a new $1.7 billion ebook subsidiary aimed at competing with the world’s largest internet retailer: Amazon (NSQ:AMZN). Shares in Barnes & Noble rose by as much as 90% on the announcement while Microsoft shares only ticked up a fraction of a percent. Don’t cry for Microsoft however - its shares are up more than 23% since the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, Amazon saw its shares rise 20% on the basis of its recent quarterly results.

Digital killed the video store, what will replace it?

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, Apr. 25, 2012 8:19AM EDT

Last updated Wednesday, Apr. 25, 2012 9:10AM EDT

It's not enormously easy to drum up fond memories of video-rental stores, but think back to the early days, when video-cassette recorders liberated a grateful nation from the roster of 13 channels. The thrill of choice was amazing.

Before the chain stores arrived, my hometown was served by a largish shop called Bandito Video, parked in a big, semi-industrial building with a Mexican bandit on the sign. A child could structure an entire summer around wrangling rides to Bandito Video to rent a Nintendo game. The aisles stretched on for miles, though it would be years before anyone let me in on the secret that most of the movies were terrible. (Steven Seagal on a battleship? How could this go wrong?)