This is topic Building audience in rural areas in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Barry Martin (Member # 1376) on 09-13-2004, 11:33 PM:
 
Hello fellow film lovers, some of you may remember me from a couple years ago, I've missed the site and the discussion and hope to visit even more frequently than when I had no job taking up my time. I am starting this thread to ask a question related to my new theater. We are located in Springfield, Vermont and if you'd been here before you would know it as the Ellis Theater, Walter Ellis owner. It is a twin screen with 212 and 67 seats and a very small lobby, just enough to fit the box office and concession.

The new owners, Daryl and Herb Wisch took over in April and hired me in May after I responded to an ad a cousin saw in the local paper. Originally I was to just be their "head projectionist" with another guy working 2 or 3 nights a week when we were only having one showtime at 7pm. Since then they have pretty much handed the business over to me and made me their manager/projectionist/booker. I could build a whole thread praising these people up and down, from giving me a free room while I looked for a place to live up here (they were very desperate for someone experienced after having tossed films and going through sabotage from former employees) to advancing me enough money to get an apartment for my wife and kids to move into so we could be back together sooner than I could afford.

So, that's the beginning of this theater. Since May we have had ups and downs as most theaters do, great takes from Spiderman 2, Farenheit 9-11, and Harry Potter, but we are in a bit of a slump and because of the restrictive nature of contracts with distributors we are looking at alternative programming to increase attendance while lowering costs. For the most part I guess I am asking those who have worked/do run theaters in smaller, more rural areas with few screens to ask how you built your crowds and what balance, if any, you struck between opening "Hollywood Blockbusters" versus "independent or art" films.

Unfortunately, the previous owner alienated a lot of his audience through poor facility maintenance and business practices. For instance, no surround sound and no soda machine. He had fruit punch makers, but you could only drink in the small lobby as he did not want to have to mop the theaters. There were hardly ever new releases on the break which just made people drive 30 minutes to the Claremont 6-plex in New Hampshire.

After taking over the new owners reduced ticket prices and started running first run. They put in soda, allow anything you buy to be eaten where you please, and increased the candy selection. This past month didn't have anything fantastic and we could not even get several films such as "Wicker Park" and "Papparazzi" (not too disappointed myself) so we started running a film from earlier this year and an "art" film in our smaller theater. Only problem is we're getting 2-5 people per show for the art film and the sub runs are barely making a profit.

We are advertising in all local papers, just started our website www.springfieldtheatervt.com, an email list for notification of coming releases, and a membership in which you can buy 5 tickets get one free for the art films (although we'll accept the passes for any film). I've discussed installing slide projectors and trying to kick off our own on-screen advertising with local businesses, but the owners disapprove. I don't fight to hard because I went through years at a Loews 20 screen where the trailer program was 20 minutes long with 8 minutes of ads! Now, we run 3-5 movie previews just to give people time to be late.

Anyways, any suggestions or knowledge you would like to share in this area, please let me know. They really want to see this theater take off for more reasons than profit and I would love to help them with it.

[ 09-15-2004, 07:35 PM: Message edited by: Barry Martin ]
 

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Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 09-13-2004, 11:44 PM:
 
If it makes sense in your zone, look into getting someone to do your bookings for you. Preferably someone who books another 50 or more screens. You may be able to get better product that way.
 

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Posted by Barry Martin (Member # 1376) on 09-13-2004, 11:52 PM:
 
We did have a booker for the first 3 months out of Florida and it was nothing but problems one after the other. For instance, when Princess Diaries 2 came out on a Wednesday he told us it would be fine to cut Manchurian Candidate short 2 days shy of the 2 week engagement we agreed to and Paramount called our recording and realized we weren't showing and demanded we show it Thursday night despite the fact PD2 was advertised and Manchurian was not. The owners were going to switch to someone else that offered to book for cheaper but weren't convinced they were being "truthful" about their amount of influence and asked if I would like to try. I haven't had any problems getting the films I want for the terms we need, with the exception of Wicker and Papparazzi which the owners didn't want anyway.

Thanks for the suggestion Daryl and if I do start to run into brick walls with the distributors I will definitely suggest they use someone else. For the moment I was wondering more along the lines of marketing and film selection. ie Whether to have one art film every week until it picks up, one art film on a certain week every month, or a series of art films a couple months/year when new releases are particularly slow and disappointing. Look forward to hearing from you!
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-14-2004, 01:49 AM:
 
As a guy who runs a single screen in a small town I feel somewhat qualified to answer your question.

First of all, here was your big mistake:

quote: Barry Martin

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After taking over the new owners reduced ticket prices

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No, no, no! If you went from running ancient product to running first run, your film rent probably at least doubled, and you LOWERED the ticket prices?! If anything they should have been raised, that is after the place had thoroughly been cleaned and spiffed up.

You will ALWAYS see a huge drop in business as soon as school starts. There is literally no way to combat this, you just have to tough it out. I think the problem is worse in small towns, because virtually everyone is either in school sports, or is a school sports fan, or has kids that are involved in sports, and besides there are almost no "mass appeal" movies released in Sept-Oct. (Although holiday stuff is coming early this year.)

If your theatre is inviting, clean, well-run and up-to-date with friendly, caring employees, and you're showing the movies the people want to see, in focus, in frame and at the right volume with a good sharp picture and sound, they will come. That's a lot of IFs, but that's the biz. The days of a smaller theatre being able to squeak by on nostalgia value alone are over. The adage, "You have to spend money to make money" applies.

You'll always have slow times of the year, but your real challenge is to make people look to your theatre first when they decide to go to the movies.

As for the problems with Paramount vs. Disney: Your booker must have been a dork. Anytime you need to go off your contract terms, permission must be obtained from all parties concerned or you're just asking for trouble, and you sure don't want to get taken off service for some little violation (and they will do it). You do need a booker though. 100 or more screens worth of clout will get you farther than 2 screens worth in the long run.
 

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Posted by Barry Martin (Member # 1376) on 09-14-2004, 04:42 AM:
 
Thanks for the reply Mike,

I think they reduced the ticket prices to undersell the "local" competition and try to attract the audience that abandoned the theater before they got here. On the attendance we're running now we're only losing $50-100/week for all films combined so the owners feel it's worth the try for the first year and plan on raising prices back to "normal" in April. I didn't come up here until about a month after they took over, but they said during that time they were getting 5-6 people per show and this is why they reduced.

As for the attendnce, the school theory is the one I gave them and we pretty much agreed there. Especially last week of August/first week of September because people have to buy school clothes and supplies. Knowing this do you just grit your teeth and hope for the best running new product through September or get in some "art" films with better rent and hope for the adult crowd to come in lieu of the kids?

The theater is pretty nice inside, a little old but clean at least. We have only stereo sound in our small theater with speakers installed but waiting on capital to buy and install a processor. The major downside is that there are some rather unsavory people living/hanging around the theater but we are trying to discourage that. The projection is a bit sub-par as the lenses don't seem to be setup correctly (ie flat pictures in small house cut off a bit on sides) and we have no masking in the small house so flat films fill the screen and scope uses bottom half.

I'm still convinced we're okay in the booking department, but you all are starting to make me doubt myself Just kidding, for now I'm comfortable trying it, can use the extra money the owners are paying me for it, and I'm getting really good responses from the distributors and getting told "yes" where our booker got "no". Thanks again for the post, look forward to more!
 

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Posted by Jason M Miller (Member # 2597) on 09-14-2004, 10:25 AM:
 
Try doing a Grand Re-Opening, do some special events, get people into the building, make sure you advertise that you are under new managment. Do a cool theme with what ever movies you have showing...like when we had King Aurthor showing we had a mid-evil group come in and show off there swords and stuff..it was cool. To get the people that hang around your theater that are not there for movies and deture people from going in, see if you can contact the local police department to see if they can do drive arounds or something.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-14-2004, 12:26 PM:
 

quote:

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Especially last week of August/first week of September .... Knowing this do you just grit your teeth and hope for the best running new product through September or get in some "art" films with better rent and hope for the adult crowd to come in lieu of the kids?

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A little of both. September is a good time to catch up on the "A" and "B" titles that got squeezed out by the longer runs of the summer movies. (It's probably easier for you to get everything played than it is for us since we only have one screen.)

You'll find that more "adult" type movies come out later in the year anyway, to capitalize on the adult crowd and also to catch the Oscar nominations.

About those unsavory people: You need to adopt a zero crap tolerance policy and stick by it. The word needs to get around that your venue is "safe" for everyone. That'll probably help as much as anything.

If I were you I would move the stereo installation project to the large house. You would probably just need to add a couple more surround speakers to the total project because you would still use the same type processor, right?

Above all I would start saving up for digital sound...people really expect it these days and I can't tell you how many people come into town and are blown away by the fact that we have digital sound here in this little burg.
 

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Posted by Barry Martin (Member # 1376) on 09-14-2004, 02:44 PM:
 
Thanks again guys,

We are advertising under new management, and we are looking at promotions to draw people such as the Shark Tale packet I received from Dreamworks. That King Arthur idea was actually great and there were a couple Rennaissance fairs around at the time, wish we had thought of that (especially since that was one of our flop films).

As for the "bad" crowd, the police do drive around quite a lot (station is down the street) and they are quite familiar with these people and their problems. We have had the police sent up to our rooms that we rent above the theater several times and had two tenants sent to jail when they were caught rolling joints/smoking and passing it off to my 17 year old concessionist girl. We only have one problem tenant left, and as she refuses to accept the notices of evicition the owners are in the court trying to get rid of them.

Problem is most of these people don't take the police very seriously, have had their encounters, and expect more, but they aren't phased by their presence. Oh well, we're working on that. It has definitely improved and is just a matter of time. The more my owners hassle them about hanging around the more annoyed they will become and hopefully stop.

Our small theater has a stereo processor, with speakers installed in the walls but not wired. Our big theater has DolbySR and speakers installed. Originally it was one big screen (and I believe may have shown stage shows as well, as our big house has a backstage behind the screen and a curtain with automation), with the two projectors upstairs set up for reel-to-reel. At some point, the former owner divided the theater to have two screens, and obviously didn't take the time/money to do it properly.

For now the setup of the theaters is simply okay, as when we are showing first runs at the break they spend their first week in the big theater with the DOLBY-SR and their second week in the small stereo house, our audience usually drops off by about 70% second week of any film so this is alright for now. When we are running one first-run or a recent release I just pick and choose which film is best suited for each auditorium (ie flat films in small theater, sci-fi/action films with more use of surround in the big theater).

The owners aren't afraid of spending money and do have some backup from other businesses they own, but would prefer each one stand on it's own two feet and not be draining on the others. They have had to put up some major expenses since taking over such as calling Boston Light and Sound out a few times before I got here for even simple problems and for the sabotage issues. At 300 miles roundtrip that wasn't cheap. Then the popper which seemed to be running fine at 25 years old quit on us, so that was another investment. And I believe they are the ones that had the speakers installed in the walls of the smaller theater.

Thanks again guys, any recommendations for independent/art films you've seen lately? The owners just tell me what they want based on reviews and I never really trust reviews too much.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-14-2004, 06:23 PM:
 
Barry - Curious -- what is the population of your drawing area?
 

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Posted by Barry Martin (Member # 1376) on 09-14-2004, 10:33 PM:
 
I know the town is close to or above 10,000 plus we are near a few skiing resorts so we have that crowd to try and draw in. Unfortunately there aren't a LOT of colleges around so that's a bit of a disappointment. The nearest theaters are 3-4 towns over in each direction so we can conceivably draw the surrounding towns to us as well, with the right films and marketing of course. How bout you?
 

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Posted by Sally Strasser (Member # 211) on 09-14-2004, 10:55 PM:
 
Hi to both of you, I'm reading this exchange with great interest. I am a new theater owner in a small town in the Adirondacks in NY. And I have been booking my own films.

So far...business is very good (Shrek 2, Spiderman, Harry, Fahrenheit) or terrible (Catwoman, Thunderbirds). People seem happy when they come but I want to get the right films into this small town.

We are renovating, twinning, new projector just installed this week, platter last month, sound going in, new screen...marquee is now lit....

People here seem to be happy we're now first run. And we're available for civic/public events, want to be a contributing part of the town.

I am wondering how you market films to the smaller towns??

Barry, I too want to add art product but have been not ready since we're only one screen.

Sally
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-15-2004, 04:08 AM:
 

quote: Barry Martin

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How bout you?

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Our town is only about 2000 people but we have about 12,000 in our drawing area. No ski resorts though!

Sally - It depends on whether you are playing a hitherto-unknown movie, or if you're playing a blockbuster that everyone wants to see (on the break or not). If you're playing the Spider-Mans and the Shreks and such, all you have to do is get the word out that the movie is at your theatre. Between TV, the net, magazines and all the other information sources out there, people are pretty well educated about what this week's hot item is. (However, if you're playing a movie that caters mostly to adults, then you have to work a little harder to get the message out because they may not be as "connected" as the kids are.)

The time you really need to promote is when you're selling something nobody knows about. Getting people talking about the product is key. The biggest key of all is TRAILERS. Get trailers and one-sheets for everything that you even think you might play. No trailer = bad business when a movie is an unknown quantity. You must order trailers as early as you can or they will all be gone.

If you have a hard time getting trailers, develop a relationship with a larger theatre where you can borrow trailers -- big theatres seem to get more than they can use.
 

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Posted by Jason M Miller (Member # 2597) on 09-15-2004, 08:38 AM:
 
Hey Barry, check out Garden State and Napoleon Dynimate both Greet films
 

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Posted by Lance C. McFetridge (Member # 95) on 09-15-2004, 12:41 PM:
 
Tupper and Springfield are both great little towns. Lots of outdoor stuff to do, so I think you first need to educate the locals about what you are all about. Then cross promotions with places like the ski lodges....Okemo and maybe Killington, I was in Ludlow last week and the place was hopping with nothing to do at night, Target places around Saranac Lake like Paul Smith, those forestry students need to do something besides look at trees. You need to actively go after their entertainment dollar by proving that you are not the old dump that it may have been. Do things to get the local kids in. Run contests at the schools. Give away small popcorns to students of the week...things like that. If the kids want to go to the movies, and the parents are comfortable with your theatre... get the idea? and kids spend money at the concession stand. All of the posts above offer great advice as well. I am a firm believer in targeting my audience, so find out what your audience might be. Polls, and ways to capture E mail address help as well. my 2cents
lance
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-15-2004, 03:35 PM:
 
Barry - the link you posted in your first post is dead. Did you spell it correctly?
 

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Posted by Barry Martin (Member # 1376) on 09-15-2004, 04:08 PM:
 
Sally, good luck to us both! Also, I just found out from www.imdb.com where you can publish showtimes online for most sources, they say it's free but I haven't heard from them yet. See what they say, but you can email them at times@nowshowing.com

Jason, thanks for the suggestion! I was considering Garden State, but have also been trying to find a film not rated R as all of our independents have been lately.

Lance, thanks for the suggestions, we have started the email list and a survey to poll people's preferred showtimes/days/movies, etc. Ludlow is actually where the owners' other businesses are! If you know Chapter XIV or Scoops, that's them. We do have sort of an "in" with Okemo as one of our concessionists works there in the winter, so we're hoping to develop something there.

Mike, I'm not sure why the link doesn't work from the page, did you try typing it in your browser manually? I know the site is working as we have been working on it everyday and had others checking on it for us to give us feedback. Let me know if anything is wrong, thanks!
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-15-2004, 05:46 PM:
 
Barry - the problem with the link was, there's a comma at the end. Removed comma, no problem!

How about putting some pictures of your theatre on the site? (In your spare time..... )
 

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Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 09-15-2004, 05:59 PM:
 
Internet showtimes

Is there some unified address you can send information too? I cannot count the number of complaints/angry letters I have gotten because people insist that 'the showtimes on the internet were wrong!" No, OUR website was right, YAHOO, IMDB, whoever were wrong. I don't know if Yahoo has someone entering showtimes in manually or if they have a data mining program that 'crawls' through pages to lift showtimes but either way it seems they take Friday's listed showtimes and copy them for the week so that whenever we have a sneak preview or Wednesday opener they fudge it up.

Quite frustrating.
 

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Posted by Barry Martin (Member # 1376) on 09-15-2004, 07:43 PM:
 
Mike, would love to put up some pics both on our own site and on FT, but at the moment have no camera and scanner isn't working well with the computer. Come to think of it, might have been smarter to pick up that digital camera while I was still working for Best Buy

Dustin, thanks for the heads up about the internet showtimes, will have to keep an eye out. I think the source that email leads to is something called "zap-2-it" or something like that. I emailed IMDB and asked how showtimes got published with them and they sent me a link to their partners page that had an email for the company which claims to originate showtimes for 94% of the screens in the country and send them to sites for publishing.
 

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 09-15-2004, 08:38 PM:
 
Build it nice and they will come..... Do film right and they will come.... keep it clean and they will come..... now I've got to go....

Mark
 

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Posted by Sally Strasser (Member # 211) on 09-15-2004, 08:42 PM:
 
Thanks Barry! I'll try that link for listings. Still haven't had enough time to set up a website or email list. I really want to but only have so much time, will get to it though.

Mike, good point about educating the adult-types. I've been concentrating on family fare but will show more attention to the older ones when the twin is up. We do posters wherever our small space will allow, and always run trailers.

My town has 6200 permanent residents and a lot more during the summer. And we're getting our ski area reopened soon. The question is: do skiiers go to movies more than snowmobilers?

I'm sure it will take some time to woo back the people who were turned off by the way this place used to be.
 

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Posted by Brad Allen (Member # 470) on 09-18-2004, 02:15 PM:
 
Barry, your owners must understand they are fighting an uphill battle. Since the theatre has gained a bad rep from the former management, it will take time to heal. Probably YEARS to heal.
Customers have very long memories about bad experiences.

In most small towns, your whipping a dead horse by trying to run "art" films. I doubt they would ever see anything but red ink from art films.

Sept for small towns is normally a disaster. The worst month of the year for many reasons.

Sounds like there is a lot of Film Done Wrong in your theatre. That is the most important item that needs addressed. Today!
And sounds like most of it can be corrected with little money, just elbo grease.

You need to become very comfortable with ladders and scaffloding.

I go along with the vote you need a good booker. It can make a huge difference in terms and pictures played.

I also agree that lowering the price was a mistake. It will haunt you.

Speaking from 30 yrs of experience in this nutty biz.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-18-2004, 06:23 PM:
 
Actually November was the worst month for us for a long time, until 2 things happened: More prints, therefore we could get more movies on the break; and the film companies moving the "holiday" season further and further up the calendar, with more blockbusters opening in November. So now our worst month has been Sept. for the past 4 years.
 

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Posted by Ramin Hashemi (Member # 2694) on 09-18-2004, 07:04 PM:
 
Let me offer my two bits worth...

We took over a poorly run, money loosing theatre in a small town about 5 year ago. ALMOST EVERYTHING was being done wrong. From selling some concession items at below cost, to canceling showtimes when less than 5 people showed up, to scratching the prints, to throwing prints off the platter often, to wasting a tremendous amount of idle personnel time, to giving poor customer service. The only thing going for us was the fact that there was no other theatre within 70 miles.

It took about 5 months to turn things around. Mind you we were totally new to the business. Today, the business has grown by about 100% Gross. We STILL get the occasional comments on the OLD days, so do not get discouraged.

Here are some things that worked for us...

Learn YOUR audience and what they like. Not just in movies, but also concession products. Offer free refills on larges, and do the upsetting routines. Get together with the schools and implement a student incentive program in which the school brings the kids as a treat. You can give them a movie, a courtesy size drink and brown paper bag of popcorn for $1-$2 above the ticket price. But do this at second or third week when the fees are less. Get on the floor and talk to the customers individually and explain the changes you are implementing. Have an open house with the chamber of commerce. As soon as you have a significant, visible change, take your prices back up. In my experience, people may complain for a day or two, but as long as you stay within the market, you will be fine (no one really cares about $0.25).

To me, customer service is always #1. If the print is bad, but the service is good, they will come back. If the print is great, but the service is bad, they will probably not.

Good luck
Ramin
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-18-2004, 08:31 PM:
 

quote: Ramin Hashemi

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If the print is bad, but the service is good, they will come back.

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quote: Ian Price

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Year Admissions (in billions)

2003 1.57
2002 1.63
2001 1.49
2000 1.42

US Population 294,312,595

The average person goes to the movies 1.875 times per year.

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i make it about 5 times a year.

carl
 

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Posted by R. Andrew Diercks (Member # 1725) on 09-20-2004, 10:14 AM:
 
The first theatre I worked at was a single screen in a town of about 5,000 people. It was terribly run down, seams of carpet were secured by duct tape. We had mono sound and a ripped screen. Most people had to duck to enter our single toilet bathrooms. My boss at the time developed a crew that loved the job and had fun there. Our grosses increased over 20% for 3 consecutive years. This wasn't due to product or quality of our building. We all had the attitude that we had the best run theatre in the area. We had fun and so did the customers. This is where I learned the importance of customer service and increasing the frequency of their visits in a small community. The company has since vastly improved it with a remodel and is currently expanding to a 3 screen.
 

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Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 09-20-2004, 02:51 PM:
 

quote:

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Internet showtimes [Mad] [Mad] [Mad] [Mad] [Mad]

Is there some unified address you can send information too? I cannot count the number of complaints/angry letters I have gotten because people insist that 'the showtimes on the internet were wrong!" No, OUR website was right, YAHOO, IMDB, whoever were wrong. I don't know if Yahoo has someone entering showtimes in manually or if they have a data mining program that 'crawls' through pages to lift showtimes but either way it seems they take Friday's listed showtimes and copy them for the week so that whenever we have a sneak preview or Wednesday opener they fudge it up.

Quite frustrating.

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Dustin,

The data services take a variety of sources to compile their information. They fall into two categories: 1) provided by the theater, and 2) getting data in whatever way possible

1)
The most accurate (usually) is a data dump right off your POS terminal system, but this is usually reserved for the larger chains due to the infrastructure cost (and probably the capability of the POS software being used).

Probably the most common way to communicate showtimes to a data provider is by fax. Just add them to your fax distribution and you're set to go. Just make sure that your faxes are readable in both visual quality and legibility of the info you're providing. (You wouldn't believe how sloppy some faxes were when I used to get faxes from theaters)

You may also be able to E-Mail them your showtimes.

2)
This is the least reliable process, as it requires the data provider to pursue your showtimes themselves instead of you sending your information.

Think about the publically available sources for your showtimes information, and that's what they have to do to provide your information to their customers (people like me). If your phone recording is hard to understand, or your web page is hard to find or hard to read, that introduces plenty of opportunities for errors.

I can't imagine that anyone is trying to auto-scan your web pages to get your showtimes. This would most likely result in an incomprehensible mess each time you made any changes to the format of your page, and it wouldn't be worth doing for all the individual web pages that are out there for small theaters.

Nothing is perfect, however. Whenever there is manual entry, there is a possibility for mistakes to be made. It can be as simple as a 6:50 show put down as 7:50 because someone hit the wrong key, or worse, a completely different movie is playing because the id for the right movie was one number different than the wrong one.

I pay attention to this for the theaters that are part of our Featured Theater Service. Since I used to do the data entry all by hand, I'm aware of the pitfalls that can happen, and I often catch errors before they become a big issue. Some things are unavoidable, and problems happen, that's just a fact of life. The important part is how well they are addressed once the problem is identified. I've heard about many more problems getting newspaper ads right than I have about the showtimes I provide.

I get showtimes from CinemaSource, which is owned by Hollywood Media Corp. The other big source is Tribune Media Services.

For contact information for CinemaSource, I have this page on the Extranet for theaters when they ask about submitting showtimes or getting data corrected:

http://www.bigscreen.com/extranet/submitschedule.php

Tribune Media Services is at:

http://www.tribunemedia.com/

and if you submit your showtimes to these two data providers, you have pretty good coverage of newspapers and web sites that carry showtimes.

Of course, if you're not paying them (newspapers, web sites) to do this, what recourse do you have when the times are wrong? While I'm obviously biased, that's why I think that our Featured Theater Service is important. We're accountable to two parties: theaters and our readers, and it's not in the best interest of either relationship to have incorrect information.

Having your own web site is nice and all, but if people don't know about your web site, it doesn't do you any good. Being listed on Google and the like is a hit-or-miss proposition, so it's important to get your showtimes on the popular services as well.

I've found that people like the ability to view showtimes across chain boundaries, instead of having to sift through multiple theater chain web sites just to get the information they're looking for.

That's why, even if you have your own web site, it's important to make sure that your showtimes are as accurate and available as possible to other services. I've never known CinemaSource to refuse a fax from a theater, and they've been very quick to correct problems when they have been identified.

But the bottom line is that you are best served if you send them your info proactively and be sure that what you are providing is usable and easy to perform data entry on.
 

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Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 09-20-2004, 06:06 PM:
 
Quite right! I always get lost in all those zeros. The correct answer is 5.33 times per year. I divided it backwards.
 

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Posted by Barry Martin (Member # 1376) on 09-20-2004, 10:04 PM:
 
Thanks for the links Scott, and the encouragement and advice R. Andrew. We do realize the difference good customer service can make, I have always seen the positive effects my service skills have produced and that is one of the more common compliments we are getting from the people who are coming. Not one change has been answered by a "why did you do that", mostly because everything we are changing is a result of common sense. No soda with popcorn? Juice you can buy but have to drink in the lobby? Sheesh, this guy really tried to be as lazy as possible.

Bob Allen wrote:

quote: Brad Allen

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Sounds like there is a lot of Film Done Wrong in your theatre. That is the most important item that needs addressed. Today!
And sounds like most of it can be corrected with little money, just elbo grease.

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Bob, you wouldn't believe the half of it if I told you everything I changed. In addition to the thrown prints and sabotage they faced before I came in the only projectionist they had built Shrek 2 with the middle reel TAILS FIRST and not even soundtrack-soundtrack! They were all told by the former owner to use this cruddy white tape on the edges by the reel change to help with breakdown, which is completely unnecessary as there is lighting a plenty in a very small booth so you can see the splices/reel changes without aids such as this. They were threading by pulling enough leader over the projector and pooling it on the floor to be able to thread the projector and then drag it back to the platter and thread the takeup. The old owner and the projectionist did not even tell them to set the intermittent so that they started in frame!

Well, anyways, we still have some issues but for the most part the picture gets on screen in frame and focus with good sound, just not the best. They are willing to fight the uphill battle and have poured the money in, just trying to see how we can increase our attendance. We have no problem getting them to spend on concession when they get here, averaging a 2.50-3.50 per cap on any given day. Just need MORE people to be spending that 2-3 bucks

I just found out that Ladder 49 is releasing on 10/1 instead of 10/8 like my Boxoffice magazine stated so I'm a bit disappointed as I was going to invite the local firefighters down with an engine and have them show off to kids coming to a matinee of Shark Tale in it's second week and have the local paper do a display in the lobby of historic local fires. It was going to be my first big marketing campaign, but now we can't get it unless we want to dump Shark Tale or run two new movies that week, no new movies the week after. Oh well, next time!

Thanks again for all your input, and keep it coming!
 

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Posted by Brad Allen (Member # 470) on 09-23-2004, 03:27 PM:
 
Barry, you will find that Boxoffice is horribly out of date most of the time... You can view most film co's release schedules online.

And nothing wrong with running two new films the same week.
Especially when you have two different demographics involved.

Good luck

Brad "Bob" Allen
 

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