Death of a Video Shop – By Steven “Monkey” Mason

I still remember the first video I bought with my own money. It was Ghostbusters, I got it from HMV in the Metro Centre. This was a big deal for me. Fast forward to 2016, I now work at that same HMV where I bought my first video, selling Ghostbusters on DVD and Blu Ray to a new generation.

As I reminisce about video shops of the past, I remember the shop Ritz being taken over by Blockbuster (the biggest video rental company in the World). When Blockbuster came to Consett, it made the Ritz shop drop a lot of it’s older films to focus on new releases.

Then one day, out of the blue a new video shop opened called “Titles”. Titles was located on Church Street in Consett, where Cash Converters is now. Titles packed a punch. It was a massive shop with a huge back catalogue, new releases, and was one of the first to stock videogames for rental.

By the mid 90s, new releases were a huge deal for video shops. New releases came out weekly and many low budget movies would go straight to video. This was a time when your choice of new film releases was abundant and much more varied than it is today.