LA Times on the Death of the VHS Tape

The Los Angeles Times reports that the lone remaining producer of VHS tapes is ceasing production of the now obsolete analog technology. The tapes have lingered in dollar stores and other downmarket venues, but now those stores are beginning to sell DVDs, soon to be another obsolete format. Believe it or not, there is a nostalgia for the tapes, which empowered consumers to tape TV shows and share movies in the 1980s. In the forthcoming book Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright (May 2009), Lucas Hilderbrand argues that videotape not only radically changed how audiences accessed the content they wanted and loved, but also altered how they watched it. He looks at bootleg movies like Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story and argues that YouTube has important roots in the VHS movement. Check it out this Spring!