A website called 24/7 Wall St. has created a list of brands that may disappear in 2011. It’s a well-written report and if you’d like to read the entire post, just click Brands That May Disappear in 2011.

For a 60-second synopsis of their report, read on:

Reader’s Digest was once the most widely read magazine in the world. According to the company, it still may be when its overseas editions are taken into account. Last August, the company took its U.S. operations into Chapter 11 to decrease debt. It would have been unthinkable just a few years ago that a magazine as old and famous as Reader’s Digest would be shuttered. However, Reader’s Digest as it is known in the U.S. will be gone.

Blockbuster is one of many brands that are predicted to disappear in 2011, according to the website 24/7 Wall St.

Blockbuster was the national leader in the video rental business for nearly two decades. Now it is contemplating Chapter 11 to eliminate debt. The company lost $65 million last quarter. Its revenue continues to fall rapidly as firms such as Redbox and NetFlix (Nasdaq: NFLX – News) siphon off its revenue. Blockbuster may still be around as a company that has movie kiosks and a small mail and Internet-delivered content business. But its brick and-mortar business is dead.

Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, the car rental company, is for sale. Hertz (NYSE: HTZ – News) is a potential buyer, as is Avis Budget (NYSE: CAR – News). Each of the larger car rental firms would use the Dollar Thrifty business to expand their market share. That does not mean that they would keep the brand. The current company is not much of a business. It made only $27 million last quarter on revenue of $348 million. It has more than $1.5 billion in “debt and other obligations.” The number of vehicles that Dollar Thrifty operates at any one time is only 95,000 compared to 420,000 for Hertz.

T-Mobile, the U.S. wireless provider, is owned by telecom giant Deutsche Telekom (DTEGY.PK – News). It is the No.4 cellular company in an American market that only supports two really successful firms — AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless. T-Mobile only had a profit of $306 million in 2009. That was down from $483 million in 2008.  As it now stands, T-Mobile has no future in the U.S. A merger with Sprint-Nextel has been mentioned several times. The combined company would have a customer base about the same size as AT&T or Verizon. And the transaction would probably make Deutsche Telekom a large owner of the combined operation. Another alternative would be a merger with Virgin Mobile. Maybe Deutsche Telekom will just change the firm’s name.

Moody’s Corp. may have the name with the largest negative brand equity in the U.S. Scandals about the company’s rating of mortgage-backed securities and allegations that the firm compromised it ratings process to get business have ruined the company’s image. Moody’s is more than 100 years old, but the reputation it built over those years is irretrievably lost. There is a chance Moody’s could be ruined by civil actions, four of which are pending, and by charges brought by the U.S. government. Overseas authorities may bring a number of actions against the company as well. Part of Moody’s operation may stay alive, but there is not much left to salvage in the brand.

BP: The case against the BP brand is not so much that the company will enter bankruptcy. It is that BP may end up breaking into pieces for its own sake. This may be to put the liabilities for the Deepwater Horizon spill into a company that also holds escrow capital to cover the huge costs of clean-up and suits. BP may also want to separate its successful refining operations from its exploration business, or recreate an American- based company similar to BP America, which existed for two decades. A restructuring of BP would also allow the firm to take a badly crippled brand and give the oil operation a new name — much as it did when it changed its name from British Petroleum. The second time may be the charm.

RadioShack is one of the oldest retailers in the U.S. It was founded in 1921 and in the early 1960s was purchased by Tandy Corp. The Tandy name was used for some of Radio Shack’s retail stores. RadioShack is currently a takeover target. There have been rumors that the company may be taken private via a leveraged buyout or purchased by Best Buy (NYSE: BBY – News), probably for its locations. Best Buy would certainly not keep the RadioShack brand because it is considered downscale and does not have the reputation for quality products and service that Best Buy enjoys. RadioShack has already begun to rebrand itself as “The Shack,” an indication that it knows the older brand is a burden.

Zale Corp. was founded in 1924 by the Zale brothers. It was one of the earliest retailers to offer the ability to buy items on credit. By 1980, Zale had revenue of over $1 billion. In 1992, Zale filed for bankruptcy and by the end of that decade, its revenue was $1.3 billion — about the same as it is today. In the last quarter, the retailer lost $12 million on revenue of $360 million. Zale is also in a very crowded market that includes retailers as large as Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT – News). Golden Gate Capital recently put money into Zale to buy it time. New money may defer the point at which Zale goes under, but it won’t prevent it.

Merrill Lynch may have been acquired, but that will not keep it safe. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Banks and other large financial services firms have a habit of buying large retail brokerage houses and then changing their names. Shearson is gone. So is EF Hutton and Prudential. In most cases the parent company wants to put their own names on the door. That is very likely to happen to Merrill Lynch, which was at one point the largest full-service broker in the U.S. Merrill is now owned by Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC – News), and the buyout spawned a number of scandals that kept Merrill’s name in the paper for weeks and did a great deal to harm its name with customers. Bank of America will follow a time honored tradition, and Merrill Lynch will become BofA Investment Management.

Kia Motors Corp. is one of the two car brands of Hyundai of South Korea. It has always been a marginal brand. Its stable mate, Hyundai USA, has a reputation for high quality cars like the Sonata and Genesis. Kia sells “low rent” cars and SUV nameplates like the Sorento and Rio. As GM and Ford (NYSE: F – News) have already discovered, it is expensive to maintain multiple brands and storied car names, including Pontiac, Saturn and Mercury, are disappearing. The parent company will take a page from several other global car companies and dump its weakest brand.

Posted by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer for the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response. Jamie’s book, How to Make Money with Social Media will be published by the Financial Times Press this fall.