George Atkinson (June 2, 1935 – March 3, 2005), was an American businessman, credited as the father of the storefront video rental store in the U.S. When the first videocassettes became available for the public, he was already in the movie business. Customers in the form of hotels and pizza parlors would rent movie projectors and public domain 8mm movies, and later

U-Matic U-matic is an analogue recording videocassette format first shown by Sony in prototype in October 1969, and introduced to the market in September 1971. It was among the first video formats to contain the videotape inside a cassette, as opp ...

videotape. When VCR's first went on sale in 1975, studios thought they would be a luxury item and that customers would want to buy films to own. Atkinson, however, was the first to see the possibility of a video rental market. (Daily News, December 13, 2002) In December 1977, George Atkinson spent approximately $3000 to buy one

Betamax Betamax (also known as Beta, as in its logo) is a consumer-level analog recording and cassette format of magnetic tape for video, commonly known as a video cassette recorder. It was developed by Sony and was released in Japan on May 10, 1975, ...

and one VHS copy of each of the 50 available movie titles from Magnetic Video, which were then being sold to the public by direct mail. He announced the availability of the videos for rent in the sports section of a local newspaper, after already advertising "Video for Rent" at an earlier date before he had any videos, along with a coupon for readers to fill out and mail in. Atkinson turned his shop into the first professionally managed video rental store and renamed it Video Station, a 600 square foot (56 m²) storefront on Wilshire Boulevard in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

. In order to raise capital, Atkinson charged $50 for an "annual membership" and $100 for a "lifetime membership," which provided the opportunity to rent the videos for $10 a day. Atkinson was soon threatened with a lawsuit for renting the videos, but discovered that U.S. copyright law gave him the right to rent and re-sell videos he owned. The battle to protect the public's right to rent videos was a major catalyst for the establishment of the

Video Software Dealers Association The Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) is the not-for-profit international trade association dedicated to advancing the interests of the $32 billion home entertainment industry. The Mission of EMA is to promote, to protect, and to ...

in 1981. Atkinson established the first major chain of video specialty retailers -- "The Video Station." At its peak, the chain had over 600 affiliates throughout the U.S. and Canada. He called these independently operated stores "affiliates" rather than franchises, not only in order to get around California's franchise tax but also because he didn't believe in "putting his hand in someone else's cash register." The company went public in 1983 but Atkinson resigned and sold his stake a few years later.(Daily News, December 13, 2002) He was the first "Video Man of the Year" (1981), named "Video Retailer of the Year" in 1982 and inducted into the Video Hall of Fame in 1991.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Atkinson, George 1935 births 2005 deaths American entertainment industry businesspeople Businesspeople from California Respiratory disease deaths in California Deaths from emphysema People from Northridge, Los Angeles Video rental services 20th-century American businesspeople