UK VHS sales more than double in 2009, Bill Cosby enjoys the attention

The way we see it, unless you’re old enough to have taped a world premiere Smiths video off of 120 Minutes (probably “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before”) you have no business hoarding VHS tapes. But maybe you are enamored with their many charms: actual tape that gets taut, stretches, or simply loses signal over time, resulting in color bleeds and ghastly images; bulky physical media; cardboard cases that stain and tear quickly and easily. Well, you probably live in the United Kingdom, then! According to a report by that nation’s Entertainment Retailers’ Association (ERA), while music sales dropped by 0.8 percent in 2009 (the lowest decrease in five years) and all other video fell by 10.6 percent, VHS sales more than doubled, from 44,377 in 2008 to 95,201 last year. Of course, everything is relative — while PC games, for instance, declined nearly 25% last year, some 6.4 million titles were sold. Even so, this is no small potatoes when you realize that almost all the sales were attributed to Bill Cosby’s Razzie Award-winning classic. What do you think, guys? Time for a Leonard Part 7?