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Are there any right times during the year to show certain types of movies besides Christmas and Halloween? I was wondering if the weather had any effect on what people want to watch when the question came up. What do you think?

A good film is a good film any time of the year. But most theatres book "themed" films during the holidays you mentioned and from Thanksgiving through New Years day schools are out and many people are visiting the area so there are more people going to the theatre.

Summer is another good time for getting extra business.

But the best thing you can do is promote your films. Don't rely on what the distributor is doing or limit yourself to a one liner in the paper. Do off-site co-ops and other off-site promotion. Use radio and TV (even a cable company sells advertising for the channels they carry).

In our part of the country (Pudget Sound area of Washington) rain seems to drive them into the theatre.

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Bob Allen
The Old Showman
"Back In The Saddle Again"

Good points, Bob.

We're planning to try some cable advertsing this season. Local broadcast television is out of our budget. The stations are all in the Seattle area, reach places that would never be good draws for us, and carry individual ad rates higher than many theatres spend in a year!!

On promotion though, the issue of advertising comes to my mind. After working with various methods of reaching people, I'm finding that getting TO them... making them aware that you're there & what you're playing... is every bit as important as finding ways to promote individual titles.

With that in mind, I've found our local newspaper advertising to be less effective than in years past (though the rates go up every year!). It appears the notion that young people aren't relying on the paper for their info as much is probably true. I'd tend to think that a very good telephone information system, followed by a simple but inclusive web site would be essentials nowadays. At least in my case, newspaper advertising is near the bottom of the stack. It'll be fun to see how cable does here.

No newspaper advertising here ... just a comprehensive website and phone recording.

The AJC (Atlanta Journal Constitution) charges an arm and a leg for newspaper advertising ...

Well, we're still in there, at least for now.

When I took over my place in '86, the former owners were running 2-column by 5-inch display ads every day. They had one phone line, and a LEASED answering machine that didn't work (for $15 per month).

Over the years, the newspaper has raised their rates like clockwork, while losing subscribers just as fast, and taking no responsibility for errors. That has developed a fairly hard attitude on my part toward them. I've held my budget with them numerically even over the past 18 years. Today, that money gets me one column by about 2 inches, and few people notice if they screw it up (not easy, since I do it and send it to them by PDF!)

grrrrr!

We do website, newspaper, and playbill (weekly delivered color posters and one color flyers to area businesses who post them in exhange for a discount coupon). We are in a tourist area and can't rely entirely on the web site because many tourists don't have access to the web when they are here. We might do Cable Advertising, heard it's a good bargain. Jack are you producing your own ad or outsourcing?

-John (Wellfleet)