All Over Albany

The answer is: Redbox kiosk locations.

We were prompted to look into Redbox locations after the recent demise of Blockbuster, which passed away after a long illness (declining revenue). The last Blockbuster in the Capital Region core, in Latham, closed toward the end of October. (Blockbuster's death was preceded by Hollywood Video, a fellow competitor both nationally and here in the Capital Region. It closed a few years back.).

The (a) conventional wisdom is that Blockbuster was killed off by Netflix and Redbox. Netflix gradually wore Blockbuster down with its by-mail service, huge catalog of discs, no late fees, and its growing streaming service. And Redbox finished the job by planting kiosks all over the place offering DVD rentals for just about a buck -- without the overhead that comes from having staffed stores.

Whatever the relative merits of all the players in this competition, Blockbuster was at a distinct disadvantage just on location alone. Netflix is pretty much anywhere there's a postal address and/or an internet connection. And by our count, there are now 74 Redbox kiosks around the Capital Region core. It's hard to fight numbers like that. (You'd think they were Stewart's or something.)

Such is the modern world. We all face the possibility of being replaced by automated box outside a Price Chopper.

Bonus bit: The Awl recently had a essay about what it was like to work at Blockbuster its (kind of, sort of) heyday.

Data notes: Kiosk locations were pulled from Redbox's website and automatically geocoded, so there could be some errors (we corrected a few that we caught). And, of course, it's possible we might have missed a locations.