Welcome to BigScreenBiz.com

You have some good ideas Alysa. Those are the kind I hope to incorporate in any operation I am able to build from scratch. It's my hope to open theatres in rural and small town America, areas the corporate multi-plexers aren't bothering with.

---

Bob Allen
The Old Showman

Everything costs money. From the cool air to the courtesy cup of water to the lights to the employees. Nothing is free. I offer those of you against on screen advertising the choice : would you rather have some slides shown before a movie, or pay an extra dollar to watch the film? With the constant complaints about elevated ticket and concessions prices, managers have to find other ways to increase revenue. We could take the slides down and raise ticket prices and concessions enough to cover the thousands of dollars lost, but then everyone would complain about soaring prices even more. It seems that no matter what we do, the public is never happy... but we keep on trying, and one day we'll figure it all out

I apologize to any of you who may have thought my comment above to be critical of Exhibitors who are trying to make a living in this day and age. Yes, the movie palaces (and the more courteous audiences in them) are gone for good. Society's standards, technological advances, and building conditions will change with time and these realities cannot be avoided! There are a few chains (such as Marcus in the mid-west) who try to make more ornamental, better run venues, but they too must depend upon commercials and refreshments to pay the bills, but some seem to make it without commercials -- even if the auditorium is turned into a cafeteria. (Some of us in the Theatre Historical Soc. have coined what we call the "Sticky Carpet Index" as we tour theatres, in reference to all the spilled drinks/food not sufficiently cleaned up!)

Alysa is right that more can be done to improve the situation, but the sad reality is that the chains -- who are the only significant builders today -- don't care about the finer points, only sheer profit, and the film distributors aim their policies at them, of course. And Bob is right about so many not knowing anything about this particular, unusual business, and that makes for lousy exhibition with little or no showmanship. Ours is the 'MBA' (Masters in Business Administration) Day and Age, where tyros are taught that there are certain universal principles in business that once mastered, will guarantee ones success in ANY business. They imply that it is not really necessary to know anything about a particular business once one is ensconsed in the Executive Office. These grads come away with the idea that they now know enough to 'change the world' and let the profits roll in! As they grow up, they sometimes realize that such ignorance will ruin a business, but by then many a would-be showman has become a candy salesman, and one more industry is ruined in the pursuit of quick profits.

If the dwindling number of independents out there can manage to maintain a pleasant house, with a minimum of sticky carpets, commercials blaring from the screen, and unsupervised auditoriums (I once went to the ticket lobby and told the woman who operated the theater that the film had stopped ten minutes ago and a guy had mounted the stage and was doing break dancing to wild cheers of the crowd, and she said to me: 'What am I supposed to do?!' with a snarl at me) where the lights mostly work, I say: "More Power To You!!" It will remain for you indies-in-exhibition to show what exhibition is to the money-crazed chains of MBAs.

I am a single screen indy with an MBA. We are both historic (the theatre and myself!) I've been in this business nearly six years and have plopped every dime I have made back into the business, plus a good chunk of my previously hard-earned retirement savings. If I didn't care about my presentation/showmanship, I could have actually been making some money. But, the place would look like, sound like, smell like, and show like the s**t hole it did when I bought it.

I hope those of you with the admirable high ideals find a well performing theatre in a highly affluent community where your patrons attend regularly despite your admission prices and regardless of the genre, rating, weather, conflicting sports events, graduation ceremonies, or whatever.

There is no battle here. We are all trying to provide some quality entertainment to our communities and, at the same time, attempting to make a living for ourselves.

Looking in the August Issue of BOXOFFICE Magazine I see that a study was conducted Arbitron has found that two-thirds of moviegoers don't mind the Ads.

Does this mean that the whole issue of ads in the theatre is that of owner prefference, or have many of us conducted our own surveys and found different results?

We have successfully been running advertising through a video projector for 4 years. Paid for the $4000 projrector in first year and use it as suggested earlier- powerpoint presentations, business, games.

As we are a community owned theatre, our patrons understand the necessity of the ads to provide income to help keep us operational. Local college students produce the ads for cost as part of their media class, burn them to DVD, and we play 2 alternating sets, 1 each showing, each at less than 10 min. We also have a C-band dish on the roof, but shortsighted board members won't realize the potential there.