Super rad independent label Merge Records, home to such stellar outfits as Spoon, Portastatic and M. Ward, will be celebrating Record Store Day (Saturday, April 19th) by doling out free 7-inch vinyl records at participating independent establishments. The album will consist of unreleased tracks from Destroyer and Wye Oak.

If there are any independent record stores left in your city, do yourself a solid and support them.

In a move Blockbuster chief executive James Keyes called a “game-changing retail concept” that would “dramatically accelerate” the ailing movie rental chain’s morphing into a 21st Century multi-platform media dispensary, Blockbuster Inc. made a $1.35 billion cash offer in a hostile takeover bid for electonics retailer Circuit City yesterday, a move that was panned by both analysts and Circuit City:

Wall Street analysts puzzled over the rationale of combining two troubled companies with little in common. Circuit City, meanwhile, put out a press release questioning whether Blockbuster could obtain sufficient financing for the deal. The offer, at between US$6 and US$8 a share, is bigger than Blockbuster’s entire stock-market value, which totalled about US$630-million based on Friday’s closing price.

“It makes zero sense,” said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz &Associates Inc., a retail consulting and investment-banking firm in New York. “Circuit City is completely underwater and I don’t see any major synergies from the deal … A deal has to be ‘one-plus-one equals three.’ This is ‘one-plus-one equals one-and-a-half.’ “

It seems the only real winner in this deal might be Blockbuster’s chief antagonist, Netflix:

Blockbuster Inc. succeeds with its hostile takeover bid for Circuit City Stores Inc., it could potentially result in the movie rental company selling its DVD-by-mail business to its online rival, Netflix Inc., an analyst said Tuesday. Jefferies & Co. Inc. analyst Youssef Squali said in a Tuesday client note that the success of Blockbuster’s bid of just over $1 billion for the struggling electronics retailer is “far from certain” but could benefit Netflix in a variety of ways. These include “making Blockbuster less competitive online, and potentially ‘forcing’ Blockbuster to sell its DVD-by-mail business to … Netflix, in an effort to monetize this under-appreciated asset,” he said.