For about twenty years the shop decided the evening. A household with a recorder and no rental shop could keep what was broadcast; a household with a shop on the corner could choose from whatever the shop had bought, which was a much larger and much stranger catalogue than any broadcaster offered.
The wall and the shelves
The layout of almost every shop said the same thing. New releases went on a wall of their own, usually facing the door, with empty display cases and the tapes themselves behind the counter. Everything older went into categories along the side walls, sorted loosely and often argued over. Shelf space was editorial judgement: a title given a full row was a title the shop expected to rent, and a title given one copy in a back corner effectively disappeared.
What that did to viewing habits
Because a shop bought a fixed number of copies, availability rather than preference often chose the film. Arriving on a Friday evening meant taking what was left, and a great deal of what people remember watching in that period is what happened to be on the shelf at seven o'clock. It also gave second and third runs a life that broadcast scheduling never would have: a title could stay in circulation for years on the strength of being stocked.
The counter rituals
The mechanics of renting produced habits that outlasted the shops. A membership card, a due date written on a slip, a late fee for a tape that stayed out, and the instruction to rewind before returning – the origin of the phrase that a great many shops printed on their stickers. Rewinding was not politeness alone: a tape returned wound to the end had to be rewound by the shop before it could go back on the shelf, and a machine doing that all day wore out.
The end of the format on the shelf
The decline was not gradual on the shop floor. Once a disc format was stocked, the new-release wall converted almost at once, cassettes were moved to a reduced section and then sold off, and the shop's older catalogue – the part that had kept titles alive for years – largely did not make the transfer. A good deal of what was easy to rent in the cassette years became hard to find immediately afterwards, and stayed that way.