Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Cinema Source Email Service?

This is topic Cinema Source Email Service? in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Dylan Carroll (Member # 8346) on 08-22-2014, 03:39 PM:

Hey every one -

So for the past few years, we have been using the free listing provided by cinema source (emailing and faxing) - and now we are being told we have to upgrade to CSXpress for a fee every month. Is this something that everyone has encountered, or are there alternatives? We would like to shop around if there are other choices.

Thanks in advance!

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 08-22-2014, 04:46 PM:

I have schedules@cinema-source.com included on my email mailing list along with everyone else who has signed up for the automatic emails through my website, and they get the same email that everyone else does.

A few years ago I got a very early in the morning phone call (YAWN!) from a guy at West World Media who was trying to sell me a service for $x/month so I could enter my showtimes directly onto their website in some way. I said no thanks, and never heard anything more about it.

I suppose it depends on your market, but for my own theatre I don't think it matters much if I'm included on those listings or not. Everyone who really cares checks my website, signs up for the email or downloads the app. So as far as I'm concerned if they want to post the information for free I'm willing to provide it for them and if they want to charge me for it then I'll get along very nicely without it.

Posted by Mike Rivest (Member # 5500) on 08-22-2014, 07:05 PM:

I think someone is trying to making money publishing showtimes to the web now that the theatres no longer pay the papers to list them.

Posted by Dylan Carroll (Member # 8346) on 08-22-2014, 08:20 PM:

So - in your markets, Flixster, Yahoo, Google, these things are posted reliably using cinema source? We have had nothing but delayed showtimes and incorrect times for a few weeks.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 09-07-2014, 03:17 AM:

We send them a comma-delimited file every week which they use to import our times. We've been doing this for many years, and have never had anyone even suggest we might have to pay.

Upside of the comma-delimited file is there is virtually no chance for input errors on their end. In all the years we've been doing this, I can't recall any time when they had incorrect times listed which were not from our mistake. Even if we forget to send the file and they try to import last week's, it won't result in incorrect listings because each line has play dates to go with the time.