It’s hard to believe that Blockbuster’s $20 million TV ad campaign hasn’t been able to save the sinking ship. Alas, the once-great video chain will soon say farewell to 182 stores over the coming months.

From Bloomberg:

Blockbuster has already closed more than 1,000 underperforming stores in the past two years. It had about 3,000 stores when it entered bankruptcy protection and planned to keep the stores operating, but analysts anticipated hundreds of stores would eventually shut their doors. The company revealed in documents filed in Manhattan bankruptcy court on Friday that it plans to close 72 stores before the end of the year and another 110 stores in the first few months of 2011.

The locations of the soon-to-expire Blockbusters were not disclosed, so it’s probably best if you return that DVD you didn’t rent to that Blockbuster you haven’t been to since you signed up for Netflix… or started using Hulu… or learned about Bit Torrent… or, well you get the idea.

Regardless, this story gives us another reason to trot out the Blockbuster/SkiFree graph.

Blockbuster to close 182 stores by early 2011 [Bloomberg]

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