Tiger Reels closing after 26 years at TU

By Rebecca Kirkman on Oct. 11, 2018

Tiger Reels, a video-rental store in the University Union, will close permanently on Friday, October 12, after more than 26 years in business. The closure coincides with construction of an 85,000-square-foot addition to and renovation of the Union beginning this semester.

Since its grand opening on March 2, 1992, a close-knit staff have kept the shelves of Tiger Reels stocked with the latest movies. But students and alumni say it was more than a place to pick up a new movie or game—it served as a social hub for the Towson University community.

The free rental service was popular with students from the start. The October 22, 1992, issue of The Towerlight reported that the store rented out an average of 150 movies a day from a selection of more than 875 titles. (In Tiger Reels’ inaugural year, blockbuster hits included “Wayne’s World,” “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” and “Sister Act.”)

By the spring of 2018, the number of titles had reached almost 3,000. During Tiger Reels’ final week in business, junior Daniel Shand packed empty DVD and Blu-ray cases into boxes stacked behind the store’s rental counter.

“Tiger Reels—it’s not for everybody, but the students that come in here every single time it’s open, they don’t just come in to get movies,” said Shand, an economics and geography major who began working at Tiger Reels earlier this term. “They come in here to talk about it, to have a conversation.”

Growing libraries available via streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon have made physical formats of video like those available at Tiger Reels increasingly irrelevant. Consumer spending on subscription streaming services grew 31 percent in 2017, while DVD and Blu-ray sales declined by 14 percent according to the Digital Entertainment Group’s year-end report.

While DVD or Blu-ray players may no longer be found in every dorm room, Shand said he and his friends still occasionally use gaming systems, like Xbox, to watch movies on DVD.

But Tiger Reels has long been about community in addition to convenience, said Katie Simmons-Barth ’05, who worked as the store’s supervisor for more than a decade beginning in 2007. “Tiger reels was a place where students would gather,” she recalled. “We created community around movies, TV shows and games.”

An alumna of TU’s theatre arts program and the department’s current academic program coordinator, Simmons-Barth described Tiger Reels as an alternate option to some of the more traditional gathering places on campus like a gym or dining hall.

“Students would come and hang out and talk movies, TV shows and the art of filmmaking all day,” she said. “It was a fun, student-focused space on campus that most definitely had a following.”

The top three movies rented from Tiger Reels this year were “Ready Player One,” “Black Panther” and “Avengers: Infinity War.” A selection of DVDs and Blu-rays is now available for purchase at the University Store for as low as $1.99 each, and the remaining movie inventory has been donated to Cook Library, said University Store associate director Timothy Collins.

Students in search of a new way to watch movies can access movie-streaming service Kanopy, via Cook Library or via a Baltimore County Public Library card.

A selection of physical DVDs and video games is available for rental at the Towson branch of the Baltimore County Public Library.

Students are also eligible for discounts on video-streaming subscription services including Amazon and Hulu.