Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Internet Show Times

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Posted by Shawn Tutor (Member # 6495) on 05-06-2012, 09:49 AM:

Our show times are not right on the internet this week. Our web page and the newspaper have the right times. Does anyone know were to go too change the times on the web I have no control over.

Posted by Tom Wienholt (Member # 1510) on 05-06-2012, 01:02 PM:

You should contact West World Media at 203-438-8389 or email them at info@westworldmedia.com. They handle movie times for most of the major internet sites with the exception of Fandango.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 05-06-2012, 02:32 PM:

Shawn, which sites are wrong? There are two main providers of internet times - Tribune Media and Cinema Source.

Tribune Media is times@nowshowing.com. The handle Fandango, IMDb, Zap2It. and others. They have a free program you can use to put your time in yourself, rather than relying on their people to get them right.

Cinema Source is edm@cinema-source.com. They handle Yahoo, Google, Moviefone, and others. I actually output a comma delimited file for them. We have been doing this for something like eight years and the accuracy of our times is virtually 100% over that period.

With either service, you should expect the correction to take 2-3 days to show up on their member sites after they put it into their system. It all depends on when the member site updates the time feed.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-17-2012, 02:06 PM:

Bump. Is this information still correct?

I am involved with a theatre that will be re-opening this fall, and which has not shown films for the last decade or so. Their programming will primarily consist of performing-arts events, but will include some film screenings (primarily classics and possibly some independent releases) as well. How do the online showtime providers deal with venues which might show films on an occasional basis? And do they accept showtimes for free screenings, or only for ticketed events? Has anyone here dealt with such things before? I could send mail to the above addresses directly, but I'm not even sure how to explain the situation. To complicate matters, I am not the theatre manager...I am just the projectionist and am booking films for them and advising them on movie-related stuff. Advertising and scheduling are new to me.

Can't they just advertise in the local newspaper and let the online showtime providers get the information from there, or does it not work that way?

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-17-2012, 03:35 PM:

You can all up the local newspaper and talk to the adv director - set up an interview - and see what the rates are for column and inch ad placements sizes.

One column, one inch directory ad will be your cheapest for the weekday runs where you could do a One column, two inch for the weekends.

(Moons ago, I used to do ads for our four-plex, on a relief basis when the mgr had other issues to do, and that was even doing layouts to take to the newspaper for our inserts. I had to figure everything that needed to go within our ad space that we had budget monies for for that week..I'm kinda envious that you got that opportunity to do this, for it was fun. good luck.)

And I've seen local advertizing being picked up by these online services, but just to display since the locations were not under a contract to sell tix online through these services.

-Monte

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 07-17-2012, 03:47 PM:

When I first opened my theatre I paid for a "now playing" ad in the local weekly paper because, well, that's what you do, right? Advertise in the paper.

The guys at the paper screwed up during the week that I was going to play the first Spider-man movie, and put that as "now playing" the week prior to the week that I was actually going to play it.

Great, I thought, I'll have people coming here all week to see Spider-man. "I drove 40 miles to see this movie and you're telling me that it's not here!"

So I braced myself for a tough week of telling people that the ad in the paper was wrong. And how many people came here expecting to see Spider-man during that week? Zero. Nobody.

That told me that nobody was reading my ad in the paper, so I have never advertised in it again.

Up until I got my digital cinema setup I sent out a monthly flyer in the mail. I now just advertise on my website and don't send a flyer. The website gets an amazing amount of traffic and costs very little to operate; I was spending $1000 per month on postage for the flyer, plus the cost of printing it. I give away fridge magnets to all-and-sundry with the website url on it; everybody seems to like the magnets. I bought 10,000 of them last year and might have to order more by the end of this year.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-17-2012, 08:53 PM:

We advertise in the local paper and I've had the same experience.... Nobody comments if there is a mistake. But, they are very accommodating when it comes to printing news articles about us, so I want to keep the relationship going.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-17-2012, 10:11 PM:

To clarify: I won't be doing the actual advertising (I will leave that to the theatre manager), but I was trying to find out if placing a newspaper directory ad would "feed" the online showtime listings (Moviefone, Fandango, etc.), or if the web site maintainers got the showtime information from somewhere else.

Essentially, I want to make sure that the theatre people know what needs to be done to ensure that the various movie web sites know that the theatre exists and have whatever they need to have in order to provide accurate showtime information.

Ideally, it would seem prudent to ensure that showtimes were available in the local newspaper, the theatre's own web site, the various "showtime" web sites, and the theatre's telephone recording. I don't know if they have plans for a mailing list, but presumably showtimes should also be printed in whatever gets mailed out to people. If everything just says "call for showtimes," I fear that many potential customers would not bother and would stay home.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 07-17-2012, 10:45 PM:

I believe most of those websites get their times from what was formerly "cinema-source" but is now "westworldmedia."

That might've changed relatively recently.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 07-18-2012, 12:17 AM:

I know that Fandango pulls from around my area.

I type in my zip code in the theatre search window and all of the cinemas in my area pops up including their respective showtimes ... only one uses the Fandango Online Ticketing Service and that's the REG/EDWS locations.

The other locations listed in Fandango are not subscribed to Fandango, thus no online ticket purchase is available.

Scott, if you went to Fandango, typed in the zip code in that search window, wonder if that little theatre and the showtimes would pop up....

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 07-18-2012, 09:07 AM:

The only people that complain about showtime mistakes in the newspaper nowadays are old people. Currently my theatre doesn't advertise in the paper and the old people complain about that.

The biggest issue I have seen is websites that pull their info from any Moviefone.com website. Occasionally someone keys in the wrong number code (at Moviefone) and a completely bogus movie is listed as playing at our theatre.

I direct our customers to OUR website and let them know that is the ONLY website that I can guarantee has the correct info (or the one we are responsible for).

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 07-18-2012, 10:53 AM:

I always put "Program subject to change without notice" on all of my advertising that contains showtimes.

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 07-19-2012, 09:29 PM:

I always recommend to theaters that they send their showtimes to Tribune and CinemaSource (aka West World Media) directly.

If you don't send it to them directly, and they have to go looking for it off your web site or (egads) listening to a phone recording, the chances for mistakes and omissions go up tremendously!

We get our showtimes data through CinemaSource, and we have the following information on our site, which lists contact information as well as guidelines for getting accurate showtimes distributed for your theater:

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

Even if you don't show movies very often, CinemaSource will list your showtimes and information. They may try to get you to sign up for their CSXpress data entry system, which is fee-based, but I don't know if they are only doing that with certain theaters or not.

Errors happen. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves. People like to complain loudly when we have some showtimes incorrect, but I've seen plenty of theaters completely mess up information on their own web sites.

Many times, errors are tracked back to a hand-scrawled fax written in nearly illegible form, or a last-minute change was made that never was communicated to the data sources. There are times when it's just simple data entry error made by humans.

The important thing is to do as much as possible to reduce the chance for errors in the first place, and to get them corrected as soon as possible when/if they do happen.