Role in Growth of Home Video Industry
Blay co-founded Stereodyne, the nation’s first eight-track and cassette duplication company, in 1966.
Blay then founded an audio/video production and duplication company in 1968 called Magnetic Video. He also started the Video Club of America, a direct-mail sales operation through which he offered the video cassettes produced and duplicated at Magnetic Video. He advertised the club through TV Guide, and nine thousand users initially joined the club.
That subsequently provided the model for and enabled the creation of the first video rental stores, many of which were soon started thereafter.
He was later recognized by the Consumer Electronics Association as creating the idea that "sparked a retail revolution as hundreds of mom-and-pop video rental and sales stores popped up in every community in America." In 1987, home video rental income surpassed movie theater revenues for the first time. Today, movie studios routinely make more money on video rentals and sales than from the box office of theaters.
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