Long before Omaha’s Applause and Captain Video, Eckhard Baum turned a small hobby into the video rental industry. In Kassel, Germany, he opened Film Shop, the world’s first video rental store in 1975. From his shop, he rented Super 8 films to customers who wanted to watch movies at home rather than in a theater. The business remains open to this day.
The first video rental store in the United States was The Video Station, started by George Atkinson in Los Angeles. George had an interesting background that helps explain his entrepreneurial path. He was born in 1935 in Shanghai to an English father and a Russian mother. During World War II, his family spent two years in a Japanese internment camp before relocating to Canada and then to California. After failing as an actor, he worked for a time as a stuntman.
By 1975, he shifted his interest from playing in movies to one that made them available to the public when he opened Home Theater, a business that rented Super 8 movies and projectors for parties. When the first VCRs came to market in 1977, he shifted to video rentals in and opened The Video Station. He grew the business to 550 affiliated stores, including locations in Omaha.
The success of these stores led to the creation of small independent stores, local chains, and eventually larger chains, including Family Video in 1978, Blockbuster in 1985, and Hollywood Video in 1988.
Some of the early movie rental stores in Omaha included not only The Video Station, with locations as early as 1979 but also The Video Connection in Orchard Plaza at 132nd and Center, Bijou’s Video Kingdom in the former Red Barn at 84th and Dodge, Modern Sound Pictures at 1410 Howard Street, Harney Street Video at 1620 Harney Street, Main Street Video at 4958 Dodge Street inside the Dundee Theater, and Five Star Video at 5111 Leavenworth Street. Local chains included Captain Video, Couch Potato Video, and Applause Video.
In 1981, John and Debbie O’Meara opened the first Captain Video at 8424 Park Drive. The chain grew to 10 stores by 1989, including locations in Ralston, Bellevue, Plattsmouth, Gretna, Blair, Glenwood, and Missouri Valley, Iowa. The exact date when Captain Video ceased offering movie rentals is unclear, but it was sometime after 2009. The company later shifted its focus to video production.
Allan Caplan opened the first Applause Video in Omaha after taking over Video Kingdom at 319 N 84th Street in 1983. It quickly became the dominant video rental chain in the city and expanded beyond Omaha and Lincoln into a regional chain by 1985. At its peak, Applause Video was among the largest video rental companies in the country, operating 59 locations.
By the time Allan sold Applause to Blockbuster Video in 1990, it was the top video rental chain in Omaha, followed by Blockbuster, which had opened in the city just a year earlier, and Captain Video. During that period, the movie rental industry had grown from about 15,000 stores in 1985 to a peak of roughly 70,000 stores by 1990, including grocery stores, pharmacies, and bookstores that also rented movies.
By the time Family Video opened its first Omaha location in 2008, nearly all independent video rental stores had closed, and the industry was already under threat from illegal movie downloads, mail order rentals from companies like Netflix, well before its shift to streaming, and kiosks such as Redbox. With the exception of Family Video, movie rental stores in Omaha had largely closed by 2013. Family Video survived longer in part due to its partnership with Marco’s Pizza but ultimately closed all remaining stores in 2021 following the COVID pandemic.
A few niche movie rental stores still exist in various parts of the country. One example is Chris Logan’s Call Video in Norfolk, which announced plans to close late last year. A recent Facebook post suggests the store remains open while continuing to liquidate its inventory.
Meanwhile, there stands one Blockbuster. Referred to as The Last Blockbuster, it is located in Bend, Oregon. After opening in 1992 as the second location of Pacific Video, it was converted to a Blockbuster in 2000. When Blockbuster closed its remaining stores in 2014, it became the last one in the United States and, by 2019, the last in the world. While it still stocks around 1,200 movie titles, it has largely become a tourist destination and museum, with most of its revenue coming from merchandise sales.
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