ABSTRACT
I know this girl-she comes into the shop where I work, and she goes to me ‘Oh, there’s a new “three parter” coming out.’
(Megan) The main use for the domestic VCR, other than off-air recording, is playing pre-recorded tapes, purchased or hired from a video rental outlet. The majority of the tapes available for purchase or hire are movies. ‘Movies’ in this context include films made specially for video distribution, films made for television, both British and American, as well as feature films produced primarily for the cinema. In Britain in the early 1980s, the beginning of the consumer boom in domestic VCR ownership or rental, a feature of almost every high street was a new phenomenon known as the ‘video library’. These were often hastily converted small shops. The tapes were boxed and displayed on shelves or stands; their covers took their references and graphic artwork from movie posters, showing the title of the movie, eye-catching images, and, where appropriate, its ‘stars’. A brief description appeared on the reverse. In the larger outlets tapes were shelved in categories, for example, Action/Adventure, Horror, Comedy, Family, Adult, etc. In these early days, usually in order to finance their purchase of new material, these undercapitalized libraries demanded a membership fee, often as high as £40, as well as a nightly fee for the hiring of tapes. At the time of the interviews, 1985-6, it was possible to join a video library free of charge, and pay a nightly rental fee of £1.00 to £1.50 per tape, although the purchase price of pre-recorded movies averaged about £40.1 Other outlets for video tapes were the corner shop and garages, but notably not supermarkets or chain stores whose organizations were not flexible enough to respond to this new retailing opportunity nor to process a rental system. These outlets existed in the ‘twilight zones’ of shopping, attracting the impulse buy or an unplanned extra when going to buy a pint of milk or filling the car with petrol.
