Dish Network Corporation will be closing down 300 Blockbuster stores in the United States in the next few weeks and may lay off as many as 3,000 employees. Dish is trying to find a way for Blockbuster to cut costs ever since they acquired them. This could affect as many as 3,000 employees, which is around 40% of the company’s 7,300 person workforce.
After Dish Network bought Blockbuster last year, they wanted to build a Netflix competitor. Dish was planning to overhaul Blockbuster into a DVD-by-mail service and movie streaming service. Dish has decided not to create a Netflix competitor out of Blockbuster anymore. Dish has sold off many of Blockbuster’s retail locations, but 900 of them will remain open in rural areas where streaming media is not that popular. U.S. regulators decided not to approve a waiver to allow the company to use a satellite spectrum for streaming movies. This is why Dish gave up on that project. [Bloomberg]
DISH Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH) has acquired Blockbuster Inc. in a $320 million bankruptcy auction. Dish Network outbid at least 3 other bidders including billionaire investors Carl Icahn. The deal includes over 1,700 Blockbuster stores and the rights to stream BLockbuster’s movies over the Internet.
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Verizon has dropped the price of the Samsung Galaxy Tab to $499. After buying the tablet, you will also get $60 worth of free movie rentals through the Blockbuster Media Hub application. Now that there has been a price drop, will you buy one? Let us know in the comments. [Droid-Life]
Blockbuster has announced that the BLOCKBUSTER On Demand service is now available on over 100 devices. These devices include smartphones, Blu-ray players, TVs, tablets, and digital media adapters. BLOCKBUSTER On Demand is the company’s response to Netflix’s video streaming services. Below is the full press release:
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Blockbuster has filed for bankruptcy, but they’re not ready to throw in the towel yet. A group of bondholders and hedge funds that is being led by Carl Icahn has signed off on a restructuring deal that will give them controlling stake in the company that took a huge market share hit from Netflix.
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Shortly after Blockbuster (NYSE:BBI) was delisted, NCR made a deal with QuickTrip to have over 500 Blockbuster Express kiosks placed in almost all of their convenience stores.
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Blockbuster Inc. (NYSE:BBI), trading at $0.18 and sitting on a market cap of $38.69 million is going to be delisted from the NYSE. Blockbuster failed to get shareholder votes on proposals that were designed to help the company comply with the NYSE requirements. Blockbuster did not get enough votes from shareholders to agree on a reverse stock split and a combination of Class A and Class B shares. There was also a low voter turnout. The only good news that Blockbuster announced is that debt-holders agreed to give Blockbuster a six-week extension for paying back $42.4 million interest and principal payment on a $630 million senior secured debt. [NewTeeVee]
