Last week I wrote about the excellence of the Best Buy stores in Memphis, Tennessee.

Just before I left the US, three late-night TV news items caught my attention.

Circuit City, the number two electronics retailer in America, was making 200 of its installers redundant.

Apparently, the sharp downturn in the property market was affecting sales badly and there were fewer installations.

The Blockbuster video chain is still hoping to buy Circuit City and thus hopes to offer hardware and software in one store.

Perhaps Blockbuster might be eyeing up some retailers over here, too?

The second news item was the decision by General Electric (GE) to sell off all its white goods brands.

GE’s appliance division presently employs more than13, 000 people and the company has been making white goods for over 100 years.

It has recently faced tough competition from the Chinese and Korean companies, who will now be vying with each other to purchase the brand.

The third news item made me laugh, although I doubt if the directors of Sharp in Japan thought it was funny.

The TV news showed a raid on a Sharp factory in Mexico that found one-and-a-half tons of marijuana hidden in a truck that had been loaded with 150 TV sets destined for Canada.

The news showed an official saying: “We need more information. People should report dealers when they are in night clubs, at horse races and at cock fights!”

After hearing that last surprising bit of information, I was pleased to switch off American TV and turn on my Roberts radio to listen to the more staid BBC World Service news.

If you look up the archived Knightline for February 28, you will see that I wrote about a speech Mark Feltham of Dixons gave to a conference of fellow property directors. I quoted him as saying: “If I was a landlord, I would be concerned by DSGi’s future in terms of stores. Our business is now 12·5 per cent over the internet.”

That warning was issued three months ago and since then John Browett, the new DSGi chief, has announced that the firm plans to close 77 Currys stores.

Unfortunately, this change in policy has also meant that Mr Feltham has been made redundant as DSGi’s property asset director.

It seems like only yesterday that he and Ian Livingston announced the creation of a separate company called Dixons Group Retail Properties to seek out the best sites for their Dixons, Currys, PC World, The Link and
@Jakarta stores.

How times change. Now DSGi’s UK portfolio is limited to PC World and a diminishing number of Currys outlets. Mr Feltham had been with Dixons for 21 years.

I recently wrote about the need to review security, but I must confess to being caught out this week.

A junkie stormed into the shop and ripped a notebook PC from its security chain. I lost an £800 PC, but at least I was more fortunate than the Comet store in Blackpool.

An angry customer went into the store and smashed a £1,000 TV with a hammer.

He then returned a week later and smashed another five large LCD screens.

When he appeared in court, he was given an 18-month supervision order.

Only a supervision order! It is just as well I am not a magistrate.