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"It's not so much a video store anymore it's like you're sharing your collection with the world," Mrs Fox said. Now, 27-years on – after weathering the change from video to DVD, enduring passing phases from Betamax to Blu-ray – Fox Video is still around, standing firm in the face of threats of pay TV, piracy and streaming. "In the beginning, we thought we'd probably have eight years' worth," Mrs Fox said. When Fox video opened in 1994 it was supposed to be a temporary venture. ( ABC Capricornia: Tobias Jurss-Lewis) The show goes on "And numbers would have been really down back then."įox Video is one of the last of its kind still standing in Australia. "I sort of got it out of one girl and she was saying there's about 10 per cent of what there were five years ago. "I try to find out from the distributors how many (video stores) are left but I think they've been told not to tell," Mrs Fox said. In 2001, the Australian Video Rental Retailers Association (AVRA) estimated there were 2,600 stores across Australia.īut there's no figure for 2021 because – like so many stores – the AVRA itself has folded. So, how many video stores are left in the country? "I always will ask, 'Do you have them where you are?' and everyone says no." "Tourists go past, and they take a step back and are like, 'Oh, a video store'," Mrs Fox said. Other stores in Cairns had clung, white-knuckled, to the glory days until this year, when they – like VHS, Betamax and 8-track – also bit the dust.īut somehow, almost impossibly, Fox Video is trading as well as it did four years ago. Rockhampton's last video store, Suzie's Movie Scene, closed last year, as did Movie HQ in Bowen. ( ABC Capricornia: Tobias Jurss-Lewis) The old guardĬOVID-19 and a growing number of streaming services have placed extra pressures on the embattled movie rental industry. Mount Morgan's Fox Video boasts of a catalogue four times the size of Netflix's.
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"There's quite a few people I'll be able to box up their choices and have them ready before they come to the counter." if someone picks a movie and he thinks 'they're not going to like that', he'll put a movie in (the case) that he knows they will like and doesn't charge them for it." And they've become adept at picking what customers will and won't enjoy. "Everyone likes something different," Ms Fox said. His wife, Louise, has a reputation for recommending the notorious tragicomedy Bad Boy Bubby to tourists looking for an Aussie classic.īut more than anything else, the couple's reputation revolves around their love and commitment to their trade and clientele.
ARE THERE ANY MOVIE RENTAL STORES LEFT TV
Rumour has it Larry invented binge watching when, more than a decade ago, he stockpiled TV box sets. With quirky paraphernalia and regular patrons, it is the video store equivalent of a country pub.Īnd like all good country publicans, its owners Louise and Larry Fox are renowned in the town. Nestled in the streets of a town lost in time, is the last vestige of a fading era – of cheap Tuesdays, one-dollar thrills and counter-side sweets that kids beg their parents to buy.įox Video – fittingly found in historic Mount Morgan in central Queensland – has been trading for more than two decades, amassing a film library owner Louise Fox says is three times bigger than Netflix's.