Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Cinema Source trying to charge fees for their internet

This is topic Cinema Source trying to charge fees for their internet in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by James Kulaprathazhe (Member # 4782) on 05-22-2011, 12:00 AM:

Is any one knows the email or fax#s of service agents or famous websites like MSN.com, Yahoo.com, Movietickets.com, moviefone.com, Holllywood .com that we can send our show times directly to them. Now Cinema source is picking theaters randomly and forcing to charge a service fee & with a contract. If theater owner didn't sign the agreement they pull out the show times from many websites. It was free of service. They make money when they sell the adds. Why they are charging theaters?

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 05-22-2011, 12:19 AM:

Something tells me it has to do with the ad revenue not being enough...

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 05-22-2011, 03:34 AM:

Business rule of thumb: NOTHING is free...just a matter of when, where and how it gets paid for.

Posted by Jake Spell (Member # 5294) on 05-22-2011, 03:31 PM:

We've been paying about $100 a month for the last year for CinemaSource.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 05-22-2011, 04:02 PM:

> We've been paying about $100 a month for the last year for CinemaSource.

And that is why they are charging, people are foolishly paying...

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-22-2011, 08:52 PM:

We don't pay anybody anything, and we don't upload our showtimes anywhere except to our own website and MailChimp, yet our accurate showtimes are available on the internet through many sites. I don't know how it works and I don't care! [Smile]

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 05-23-2011, 03:30 AM:

Mike, what's MailChimp?

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 05-23-2011, 09:14 AM:

quote: Mitchell Dvoskin was the last to post
We've been paying about $100 a month for the last year for CinemaSource.

I found out this past December that Cinema Source has a service called csXpress that allows theatres to have direct complete control over their show/pricing information that is done via a secure login 24/7. The cost is $100/month. The information is then provided to all the major websites (2000+) such as Google, Moviefone, IMDB, MSN, etc...

Their free service is if the theatres fax/e-mail the show/pricing information to Cinema Source. The only drawback is as I'm sure many of us have found is that we are relying on another person to input the data and then the only way to verify the information is correct is to visit these multiple sites and often times if its incorrect you have to re-fax or call a rep(good luck on a weekend or holiday) to try and get the information corrected. But hey, I guess we can't complain too much since they are providing this service for free.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 05-23-2011, 10:05 AM:

The only internet posting we do is to our own website, but I can't count the number of times people have come at the wrong time or seeking the wrong movie and said "I saw it on the internet."

Information wants to be free, but it doesn't appear to want to be accurate.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 05-23-2011, 11:59 AM:

quote: Frank Angel
what's MailChimp?

It's an email marketing website. You can send email through it to a list of contacts.

I set up an email mailing list that my customers can sign up with through a form on my website to receive updated movie listings and showtimes for my theatre but I don't go through any third-party services to handle it; I just wrote my own little program to handle the mailing list. The advantage of that is that it does exactly what I want it to do, as it's purpose-built and the whole thing lives on my computer and sends email out through my mailserver.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-23-2011, 03:14 PM:

I like MailChimp because it's easy, it's free, it has a lot of built-in templates and other doo-dads, and it gives me all the stats I need. You can make your emails as plain or fancy as you want. I put a sign-up link on our home page and I also put on on each "movie information" page. Our mailing list has doubled since I started using it in Feb. 2010.