At least two of their local stores are now opening at 6 am and offering coffee and slurpees. Sounds like a terrible idea, but it’s probably just a last-ditch effort at staying solvent.

I worked for Tom on this project, and I’d like to add an extra detail. Our long-term partner to deliver all this high-bandwidth streaming media? Enron. They junked our proposal for a cost-effective, high performance set-top-box that could run a custom Flash-based UI, for a lousy box with a lousy UI, that I later found out was made by a company partnered with…you guessed it, Enron. As for vision, I believe Mr. Magoo also has vision.

In my opinion, Blockbuster can continue playing second-fiddle to Netflix, concentrate more on smaller markets with less broadband penetration (think Movie Gallery) and let the true interests of the business, not execs gaming the system to get bigger bonuses, find the next big thing and license the BB brand (example: BB store on iTMS)

There’s a Blockbuster one block away from my house, and if the wind blows just right, I can smell the desperation and flop sweat. On the other hand, it may be coming from corporate, I’m not that far away from there, either.