Movie Gallery Officially Declares Bankruptcy…Again

So the word is out that Movie Gallery has, once again, declared bankruptcy, and is planning to close fully eight hundred stores as a result.

This is the second time in three years that Movie Gallery has declared bankruptcy, and is being hit hard by the recent push for DVD by mail, DVD by kiosk, DVD over the internet, and DVD pretty much anywhere except in a big boxy store.

How bad were things for Movie Gallery?  Pretty bad, the story goes:  Over the last three years they’ve closed just short of half their stores and in the last year alone saw a loss of about half a billion dollars from the previous year’s take.  You can’t lose that kind of money for very long and expect to stay in operation.

The interesting thing is that the bulk of the closings seem to be affecting areas where choices are widely prevalent. I personally live in a mostly rural setting that is served by TWO Movie Gallery outlets within about twenty miles of each other.  I figured, well, surely one of them is closing…but when I called both, I discovered they were both to remain open.

Chances are the closings are in areas already saturated with brick-and-mortar video stores, which my area was not.