Dish Network continues to close Blockbuster stores as it pursues chairman and co-founder Charlie Ergen’s vision to create a nationwide provider of wireless and video services.
Having already shuttered about 1,000 Blockbuster stores since acquiring the , Dish said Tuesday that it will close another 100 underperforming locations in the U.S. by the end of October.
Douglas County-based Dish still operates 450 Blockbuster stores nationwide, including 20 in Colorado. In January, the company had 26 locations in the state.
Dish, which serves 14 million satellite-TV customers, recorded a $5 million operating loss for Blockbuster during the second quarter.
In 2012, the Colorado Economic Development Commission granted Dish up to over five years after the company moved Blockbuster’s headquarters to Douglas County and said it would create up to 150 management jobs.
At the time, about 1,000 Blockbuster stores were still standing. But the business continues to struggle as more consumers ditch physical DVD rentals in favor of online streaming from Netflix and on-demand offerings from pay-TV providers.
“We’re getting close to being profitable on the remaining stores,” Dish CEO Joe Clayton said Tuesday. “We’ll continue, as we stated in the past, to look at the business on a store-by-store basis.”
Meanwhile, during a conference call with analysts and media, Ergen spoke publicly for the first time since and mobile broadband network operator Clearwire.
He said T-Mobile is the only wireless carrier remaining that Dish could potentially acquire. But a network-sharing agreement with any of the others is an option. Ergen specifically highlighted potentially partnering with Sprint, which was acquired by Japanese telecom giant SoftBank.
“In an ironic sort of way, Sprint becomes an interesting potential partner,” Ergen said. “We understand Sprint and Clearwire probably better than we do any other wireless providers.”
