Indiana Town Successful In Removing Titles From Redbox

In October, I posted about Union City, Indiana whose city council asked the local McDonald's franchise to remove R-rated and unrated titles from it's Redbox movie rental kiosks. They had gone so far as to request the kiosks carry only G-rated product.
Now apparently they have succeeded in getting McDonalds to remove the R-rated titles. According to Union City's mayor, the owner of the Union City McDonald’s has agreed to take out the R-rated titles after being threatened with a Union City public nuisance citation. It was not reported if unrated titles with similar content were also removed. The city council had been pressuring the McDonalds franchise to remove the offending titles, complaining that it was too easy for young customers to rent titles rated appropriate only for people older than 17.
Should this be repeated in other cities, it will certainly give traditional brick and mortar video stores an advantage over the kiosk rental machines. A quick informal count of the 195 films in wide release in 2007 showed about 28% to be rated R; although it is common for DVD releases of films not rated R theatrically to include content which would have earned the film an R rating, often being touted as 'Unrated!' or 'The version you couldn't see in theaters!' The Union City mayor stated R-rated films made up 40% of the titles for rent in the Redbox kiosks.

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