Could YouTube have survived in the 1980's using a Blockbuster Video model?

Hear me out...

Some posts on Imgur got me thinking. Could YouTube have existed before broadband internet? There was no real shortage of amateur video in the 80's or even earlier, all that was lacking was a means to distribute it.

Imagine every town and every neighborhood in a big city having their local YouTube store. You could browse for VHS tapes (and later CD's and DVDs) created by independent, often local, content creators. The most popular stuff would get shared to stores across the country. The best "channels" could conceivably go nation wide.

Commenting might be handled by US mail or by physical bulletin boards at local stores, maybe both. Dial up BBS's were also a thing at the time.

Content creators would get a percentage of the sale each time their video was rented. YouTube stores would provide additional services to the content creator such as duplicating an ideal number of copies of their content based on demand.

While a single 30 second cat video might not make the cut a compilation of cat videos could meet some sort of minimum video length set by the store.

Thoughts?

No

No.

YouTube in its current form is accessible from anywhere and requires almost zero effort use. That is part of the appeal.

Any other structure where time/effort/$ on the user side is required = immediate fail.

I agree with no and fail.

Let me ask you a question. How many times have you watched 15-20 seconds of video only to realize it was chit and clicked to something else? Now instead for spending a few seconds finding and starting another video, you are spending over 30 minutes driving back to the store, searching for and checking out another amateur produced piece of garabage.

Blockbuster had actual value in the form of big studio movies that took millions to make. YouTube has crap.
Blockbuster died. YouTube would have had ZERO chance.

BlackDak said:

Let me ask you a question. How many times have you watched 15-20 seconds of video only to realize it was chit and clicked to something else? Now instead for spending a few seconds finding and starting another video, you are spending over 30 minutes driving back to the store, searching for and checking out another amateur produced piece of garabage.

Click to expand...

Well for me and most people in the 5 boroughs of NYC "Blockbuster" was 5 minutes away not 30 and you probably passed it on way to school or other times during the week at least.

As I said short videos are out but youtube has tons of content at least as long as a 30 minute tv show without commercials. I've been watching more (well listening usually with them in the background), all kinds of subjects that don't make it into multimillion dollar movies. You don't need 50 copies of "Numberphile" compilation, just one or two. There would be more research involved (reading the box), or reviews from friends...

Also I;m not saying YouTube could thrive under this model only it is interesting to think about if they tried.

BirdOPrey5 said:

Well for me and most people in the 5 boroughs of NYC "Blockbuster" was 5 minutes away not 30 and you probably passed it on way to school or other times during the week at least.

As I said short videos are out but youtube has tons of content at least as long as a 30 minute tv show without commercials. I've been watching more (well listening usually with them in the background), all kinds of subjects that don't make it into multimillion dollar movies. You don't need 50 copies of "Numberphile" compilation, just one or two. There would be more research involved (reading the box), or reviews from friends...

Also I;m not saying YouTube could thrive under this model only it is interesting to think about if they tried.

Click to expand...

Don't fool yourself, even at five minutes away, there is no chance you are getting there and back in under 30 minutes

No one is going to want to go check out a bunch of 2-10 minute videos.

So no, it would not have survived.

Not only no, but hell no.

YouPorn, yes

YouTube, no

chris c96 said:

YouTube in its current form is accessible from anywhere and requires almost zero effort use. That is part of the appeal.

Any other structure where time/effort/$ on the user side is required = immediate fail.

Click to expand...

All of this.

The reason YouTube has so much content is its ease of use in posting it. I make YouTube videos and part of the appeal is I click upload and it's done. I don't have to put it on tape, talk YouTube into putting it in a local store, waiting for it to get popular enough to go to other stores or nationwide. When I click upload people in the UK can see my videos instantly. While it is interesting to consider it isn't feasible

C5inAZ said:

No one is going to want to go check out a bunch of 2-10 minute videos.

So no, it would not have survived.

Click to expand...

What about 30 minute+ videos?

C5inAZ said:

No one is going to want to go check out a bunch of 2-10 minute videos.

So no, it would not have survived.

Click to expand...

Faces of Death series of tapes were popular in those days.

Heck, we even had pirated movies way before the internet. Just nip down to any local market and there was always a stall selling them it was just that the lower sown the shares you were the worse the quality. Luckily I knew the main man for Leeds so got decent stuff. Oh, and if you had a bad a bad copy or bad film he would exchange it for something else