Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Regal dropped newspaper advertising in Honolulu

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 08-31-2014, 11:06 PM:

For some reason, Regal stopped advertising their movie listings and show times in the state's largest newspaper, The Honolulu Star Advertiser. I do not know how this is affecting their movie attendance based on their assumption that everyone will go online for their movie listings and schedule. I know of a lot of people my age who do not have a computer but still go to movies. Consolidated Theatres still advertise in the Star Advertiser so they must be picking up a lot of business from these older folks.

-Claude

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 08-31-2014, 11:19 PM:

Claude, we dropped our newspaper ad about 6 months ago. After surveying our customers for about a month, we found that less than 5% of people were getting times from the newspaper. And many of those people said they also called our recording or checked online. After extrapolating the cost (actual newspaper cost and layout price), we found it was costing about $1.25 per ticket sale for our newspaper ad.

For the very small number of people who really can't use a computer, we mail out a flyer with times once a week. This mailing list has 7 people.

I know the conventional wisdom is that many seniors are ludites who don't use computers. But we found the numbers were so small it didn't justify the cost. We have seen no appreciable decline in our attendance by seniors since dropping the ad.

Posted by Buck Wilson (Member # 5885) on 08-31-2014, 11:50 PM:

I would certainly have an ad in the paper if I had my own theater if for nothing other than convenience.

That said............ I can't particularly blame a large corporation such as Regal(As much as I dislike them) for making that decision. They cut ours too, and I do have to field plenty of complaints, but think about it. They're AT THE THEATER buying a ticket, so they obviously found the times somehow despite their "I DON'T OWN A SHRED OF TECHNOLOGY SCAMS, THIS IS AN OUTRAGE" statements.

I tell them to vote with their dollars.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-01-2014, 08:16 AM:

I think it's a stereotype older people can't/won't use computers and other technology devices. There are some Luddites out there, but most will use computers, smart phones and the Internet especially if they get a little help if they're having trouble with the learning curve.

I have liked newspapers ads in the past, particularly the large "stack" ads that would run in major city newspapers. Those ads were the only place where one would see those big 70mm logos. And one could use those stack ads to determine which theaters were the top ones in that area based on technical things included in the ads. But that was back in the 1980's and early 1990's. Newspaper ads started going to shit since then. And other factors have made them even more useless.

In a lot of markets the people who created the stack ads started dropping all the tech info from them. By the middle of last decade not many movie stack ads or theater directory ads included any of that stuff unless it was an ad in a New York or Los Angeles ad. I used to visit our local library at least a couple times a month to scan through several big city newspapers to check out the movie ads. I quit doing that over 10 years ago.

It has been over 10 years since I subscribed to the local newspaper here. The day old news printed on dead trees they were reporting was news I already knew by way of local TV news, national TV news or the Internet. They weren't reporting a whole lot of local content, particularly anything exclusive. I had no reason to keep subscribing.

Here's the crazy thing: even with their circulation numbers dropping to fewer and fewer readers our local paper was still raising its column inch prices for advertising! Our local movie theaters went from having fairly good sized ads (and even big ones sometimes) to running postage stamp sized ads with very little information. That just pushed more people to the Internet to find showtimes and other info.

Unless our local paper radically reinvents itself it's going to go bust soon. Their core group of subscribers is older and literally dying off. I have no intention to subscribe unless they can rebuild a staff of local reporters. They gutted that department several years ago. We have a local magazine, called OKIE Magazine, that's available in print and online for free that arguably does more to let people know what's going on in town that the traditional newspaper.

Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 09-01-2014, 11:46 AM:

I liked back when even small town newspapers devoted sometimes a full page for movie ads playing at your theaters.These Type Baiter Ads really worked getting people to the theaters back in the day...

In FORSYTH, MONTANA.........(I don't think so Mike) [Wink]

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 09-01-2014, 12:16 PM:

quote: Claude S. Ayakawa
For some reason, Regal stopped advertising their movie listings and show times in the state's largest newspaper, The Honolulu Star Advertiser. I do not know how this is affecting their movie attendance based on their assumption that everyone will go online for their movie listings and schedule.

I doubt the advertising showtimes in the paper was bringing much business in, but for simply showtimes, the small percentage of people using the paper can just move to calling in to the theater or something online.

quote: Claude S. Ayakawa
I know of a lot of people my age who do not have a computer but still go to movies.

I do agree that there is a significant population who do not use computers, but they can just call in.

quote: Justin Hamaker
we found it was costing about $1.25 per ticket sale for our newspaper ad.

That does seem quite high?

quote: Buck Wilson
They're AT THE THEATER buying a ticket, so they obviously found the times somehow despite their "I DON'T OWN A SHRED OF TECHNOLOGY SCAMS, THIS IS AN OUTRAGE" statements

I'm sure these people know how to use a phone [Embarrassed]

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 09-01-2014, 12:16 PM:

I actually posted this before ( here ).

quote:
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.

On an unrelated issue brought up in the previous post, how many Roxys, Capitols and Majestics can there be? Since my theatre is the only one in town, it doesn't matter what its name is, since everyone will just refer to it as "the theatre" regardless of what its name is. But in a city where there is more than one theatre, I think a unique name would be an important part of the advertising and image of the place; Capitol just doesn't seem to do it when there are seventeen more Capitol Theatres within a hundred mile radius or whatever.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 09-01-2014, 12:21 PM:

Most local media has a major web presence as well. I look at the San Bernardino Sun (which not only has a website but an Android app as well) and the Redlands Daily Facts online all the time, but a hard copy only when I come across one lying around waiting at the hairdresser or some place like that. I'm guessing the problem is that the advertising for the online versions of the local papers is done through a national or even international ad broker who supplies the banner ads, and so specifically local advertising doesn't make it onto local media sites that way. At the other end of the process, the theaters are going to place their ads through agencies whose focus is on making them visible through Google, because that's how most people who go online for showtimes are trying to find them. So the whole process is not good at matching local ads to local news "paper" sites, and theaters are facing a dwindling audience if they place ads in the print versions exclusively.

Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 09-01-2014, 01:41 PM:

quote: Frank Cox
On an unrelated issue brought up in the previous post, how many Roxys, Capitols and Majestics can there be? Since my theatre is the only one in town, it doesn't matter what its name is, since everyone will just refer to it as "the theatre" regardless of what its name is. But in a city where there is more than one theatre, I think a unique name would be an important part of the advertising and image of the place; Capitol just doesn't seem to do it when there are seventeen more Capitol Theatres within a hundred mile radius or whatever.

Outside of the familiar theater name FOX because they were a chain Cinema. Our old single screen theaters had names like BABCOCK,RIO,LYRIC,DOLLY,WORLD,& CROSSROADS. I have old Newspaper ads like the one's above from all over the US and you wouldn't believe how many BIJOU Theaters there were at one time.Lots of STRAND theaters also.

I agree that a theater owner/group shouldn't have just picked the old standby theater name. I remember one Drive-in we had originally called the CITY-VU back in the 50's renamed itself "BIG SKY DRIVE-IN" Probably because Montana's tourist advertising refers to our state as "BIG SKY COUNTRY" ...

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-01-2014, 02:55 PM:

Yes, Steve. I too used to enjoy when both of Honolulu's two major newspapers
at the time, the Honolulu Advertiser and Star Bulletin used to have a lot of large display ads especially on Fridays when there would be new movie openings. Most of the time, the movie page will be devoted to almost a page. Sometimes there would be a full page ad for only one movie. The last time I saw a full page ad in our Honolulu paper was for a special exclusive engagement of EVITA in 1996 at Consolidated's Waikiki #2.

Although I get all of my movie theatre information from either my laptop or my iPad most of the time, I sometime look it up in newspapers. Because I am partial to seeing my movies at Regal theatres now, it is a bummer they dropped their newspaper advertisements.

-Claude

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 09-01-2014, 03:20 PM:

25 years ago, my wife did a survey among her high school students:Do you have access to a newspaper? Do you read it? In a high school of 800 students, less than 45 actually read the paper.

For films, they call or look on line or just show up.

I suggested that my customers drop the ads since the target audience does not use them.

As Eddie Marks used to say: "Don't ever pay for advertising. They will carry your ad for free on the radio if you make it into a contest. Once you pay, you can never go back to contests." (Eddie was advertising managers for Stewart-Everett Theatres in the Carolinas.)

Posted by Terry Monohan (Member # 8285) on 09-01-2014, 10:50 PM:

Regal does this in Santa Cruz CA along with the one theatre they run in San Francisco CA. What will happen in Hawaii Regal thinks they will save money but they will loose with the tourist crowd. Like in SF AMC and Regal don't run newspaper ads but Cinemark/Century does, they get all the out of town movie crowd. Go to the AMC Van Ness It's EMPTY, Go to the CenturyC

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 09-01-2014, 11:42 PM:

REG is the only cinema in my area that does newspaper ads, and these are the 1 column 6 inch ads each day.

The other cinemas in my area either have no ads, weekend ads, or just a slug to check on the website.

Even then, this size rate does cost the business since the cost per inch have skyrocketed, where as others mentioned that it's more easier now to check via internet or on the smartphone up to just calling the recording line.

Sad is when senior citizens wants to attend your location, they ask why there is no newspaper ads anymore and one has to tell them that everything is on the internet, smartphone or recordings.

The senior citizens gets all pent up saying they don't have computer and blame the venue for not posting information in the newspaper as the practice was done years ago.

..just the change of times that is happening and the senior citizens refuse to accept it, or feel that it's just too much for them and feels intimidated by the methods of the present generation.

If REG have started that practice in eliminating newspaper ads in Hawai'i, they'll eventually do it throughout the entire circuit here in the continental U.S. and Alaska.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 09-02-2014, 12:37 PM:

How many times have you had to deal with misprints?
How any times have you had to deal with the newspaper just plain printing the wrong ads?
How many times have you had people walk in with YESTERDAY's newspaper and complain that they drove all the way into town just to see the movie that ended yesterday... Only they didn't check the date on the paper?

It is better to put them on a phone recording or on a website where you have control of the information.

It makes no sense to waste money on newspaper ads.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-02-2014, 01:45 PM:

We probably need newspaper ads less than many theaters, since we're very visible on the main drag and almost everybody in town drives by us every day. But, we run newspaper ads for two reasons:

1. To support the local newspaper, which needs all the help it can get

2. To maintain a relationship with the paper

The second reason is important because anytime we need to get a story in there about some upgrade we've done or some event we're having, I can just let them know about it, or write it up myself and they'll print it because we're an advertiser.

I agree almost nobody from the "current generation" reads the ads as a rule. However, I would rather reach everybody, not just the "current generation." We have a lot of grandparents in town who like to take their grandkids to the movies, and some movies do appeal to seniors, so the ads probably help some with that crowd.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-02-2014, 01:56 PM:

I forgot to mention in my original thread, Consolidated does not list film schedules and show times for all of their theatres in their week day ads in the Star Advertiser. They only list the Ward 16 and the Kahala. 8 and phone numbers for their other theatres in a ad measuring about two column by five inches. Only their weekend advertisements list all of their theatres.

-Claude

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 09-02-2014, 03:34 PM:

The smart local papers/sites are going to need to rethink how they handle local advertising, perhaps taking it directly from local advertisers and incorporating it into the editorial pages rather than signing an exclusive agreement with a banner ad supplier.

That having been said, another issue is that many local papers are owned by larger media companies (for example, two of the three in my local area - the San Bernardino Sun and the Redlands Daily Facts - are owned by CNG, and the other, the Riverside Press-Enterprise, is owned by Freedom Communications), which sell advertising across all of them, just like the studios sign distribution deals with the big theater chains, leaving local site managers with little or no say in what movies play.