With Popcorn, DVD’s and TiVo, Moviegoers Are Staying Home – New York Times: The New York Times asks the question whether or not the box office slump for new movies is due to poorer quality movies being made or if perhaps there is a cultural shift with people choosing to get more of their entertainment on demand, through time shifting technology, or though DVD.
The “cinema experience” continues to improve at home with HDTV and high resolution plasmas. Could there be a cultural shift going on?
“It is much more chilling if there is a cultural shift in people staying away from movies,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of the Exhibitor Relations Company, a box-office tracking firm. “Quality is a fixable problem.”
But even if the quality of movies can be improved, Mr. Dergarabedian said, the fundamental problem is that “today’s audience is a much tougher crowd to excite. They have so many entertainment options and they have gotten used to getting everything on demand.”
Well one thing I do know. With over 10 million blogs tracked now, at least some people (myself included of course) spend a lot more time blogging than I used to pre-blog and this is but one of many digital technology advancements that threaten to pull our time, money and attention away from a night out at the movies.
That article pisses me off.
Out of one side of their mouth they say, ‘The quality of movies is on the downfall. They aren’t good enough to get people to come out and watch them’, and then out of the other side of their mouth they say ‘sales of DVDs are on a sharp incline’.
Don’t they realize that those DVDs are the same movies that people aren’t watching in the theatre? Don’t they realize that it’s not content related.
Let me tell you why nobody I know goes to the theatre as regularly as they used to:
1. Economics. It costs about $30 for me to take my lady to the movies and enjoy a snack. That’s about 2x what it costs to OWN the movie on DVD.
2. Commercials. The whole point of commercials, from a media standpoint, are that they are supposed to generate income while reducing costs to the consumer.
So here we have a channel of information that has to go against the grain. Newspapers, television, magazines all have ads, but they make up for it (at least in some sense) by lowering costs. Now you have to sit through 15 minutes of commecials at a movie theatre to watch a movie that cost you much more than it did before they added commercials. And then they have the nerve to say that it’s the movie’s fault.
Get a clue people!
I doubt quality has much to do with it.
I don’t like going to the movie theater. Cost is a big factor, same with commercials, but I hate having to get there half an hour early, finding seats, watching out for soda covered floors, people kicking my seat, people talking, people who bring infants that scream and cry, just other people in general :).
I also have a problem blowing $20 to see something I don’t like. I have Netflix so if I rent a bomb, it doesn’t really matter. And like Damon said, you can generally BUY a dvd for less than the cost of two tickets.
I just saw Episode III in the theater, I can’t quite remember but I think the one before that was The Incredibles. Since getting Netflix, I probably only see three or four movies in the theater per year.
Here’s another one: by the time enough people have seen a theatre-worthy movie and recommended it, it’s no longer in the theatre.
Prime example: Ray. I watched it on OnDemand. I would have preferred to see it on the big screen.