Slow-moving Blockbuster can't hold the audience's attention

If you stick two bricks together, they still won't float. With that in mind, it is probably a good thing that Blockbuster pulled out of its $1.3bn deal to buy American electronics retailer Circuit City last week.

Now the company that once led the world in video and DVD rentals must contend with the realisation that it has become, in business terms, a brick, with all the associated buoyancy problems.

It is hard to believe that, back in...