Quantegy, which was the last manufacturer of open reel analog tape, has closed the doors of it's AL plant, and has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
This is all over the forums. Emtec, the pro tape successor of BASF, closed shop earlier this year for similar financial reasons.
As someone who has committed to analog formats, this concerns me quite a bit. I refuse to accept the most dire view, though. There is a market that demands tape and isn't going anywhere, though they are a relatively marginal market. Someone somewhere will probably step in. I'm guessing we will see quite a winnowing of available formats - probably 2" (the demand will be there), 1/2" and 1/4". If you're making 2" stock, slitting a narrow format is not hard, but 1" might be too small a perceived market - if available, I'm guessing it'll be rarely produced and sold at a higher premium. I would guess two formulations and that's it - if it's Ampex/Quantegy, it'll be 456 and GP-9, which is a lot more choice than was available for colors of Model T's.
Will it vanish completely? My answer is no. Vinyl has had a rebirth. US manufacturers stopped making tubes, and the foreign producers rose to the challenge, producing some excellent products, and demand in fact got some US manufacture back in play. There are differences in that these two instances are driven by eager consumer markets (Vinyl fueled heavily by the DJ trend), but I think there is more reliable demand to be realized in tape. All it'll take is a popular band saying "tape, tape, tape, tape, tape" in the right magazine for it to become absolutely necessary to track to 2" before fixing/cutting/splicing/tuning everything in the computer.
If I'm wrong, I'll have fun experimenting with the possibilities of using my 8 track for looping.
Bear