The home-video revolution was born with a little ad in TV Guide. In 1977, Andre Blay, a Detroit businessman who owned Magnetic Video, was offering Hollywood movies for sale in the home-video format. Blay had licensed 50 best-selling titles from 20th Century Fox, including The Sound of Music and Patton. Now he was offering these movies to the public through a direct-mail sales operation called the Video Club of America.

Although VCR owners were few at the time, 9,000 joined Blay's club, and fortuitously, his movies went on sale just as VCR prices dropped below $1,000. The French Connection and MASH proved especially popular, and by the end of the year, Blay had sold a quarter of a million cassettes and his factory was running 24 hours a day to produce more tapes.

Blay’s idea of selling feature films to the consumer had become a bonanza and the home video tape bandwagon was rolling.

While video sales and rentals are commonplace today, Blay’s idea was revolutionary at the time. In the late 1970s, Hollywood executives feared the competition of the VCR. But when Blay’s initial proposal arrived at 20th Century Fox, the company’s economic fortunes were running low and they were ripe for a new idea that promised to make some money. Blay paid Fox an advance of $300,000, plus a minimum of $500,000 a year against a royalty of $7.50 on each cassette. He selected appealing titles like Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and Hello, Dolly! benefited from having the right idea at the right time and later sold his successful company to Fox for $7.2 million.