Opera and sports broadcasts at cinemas

schmadrian on March 25, 2008 at 2:49 pm

This is precisely the sort of non-linear thinking the movie theatres should be doing. They cannot control the product they receive from their ‘supplier’…and there’s only one supplier. So they have to do something they’re notoriously bad at: innovate. (What’s really funny to me is that their arrogance -seen best in how they’ve absolutely abrogated their responsibility to provide the customer a satisfying experience, not just shepherd them into the auditoriums after feeding themâ€" is actually not something they’ve earned…because they’re no longer the primary means for most people to enjoy the films they watch.) They’re going to have to WORK for their share of peoples' discretionary entertainment monies. Welcome to the 90s.

This quote from Moby, modern musican, DJ and pop-star about the music industry actually indicates some intriguing parallels to the film biz:

“Every aspect of the music business is in a state of transition — the way records are made, the way they’re distributed, the way people listen to them, how music exists,“ he says. "I was talking to someone recently and we were remembering that, up until the Walkman, music never left the home. Unless it was on a transistor, unless it was on a radio, that idea that you would bring your music with you didn’t exist. You bought a record, you listened to the record at home and maybe, if you were feeling really crazy, you brought a record to a friend’s house. It’s such a different way of thinking about music that it’s so portable now.

“For the longest time, people just associated music with the delivery vehicle it was presented on. So people thought of music as being a record or being a cassette or being a CD and not recognizing that it’s this intangible entity. It’s the only art form that has no actual substance. Music is just air moving around … . And so, I think, even in the record companies, they always assumed music would be linked to some plastic delivery vehicle. And now, it isn’t.”

It used to be that the only way you could view a movie was at a cinema. No more. Times have changed. And if cinemas are to survive long-term, then diversification is the key. People are entrenching themselves more and more in their home entertainment systems. Cinemas have to find creative (and lucrative) ways to get them into their facilities. Not just for these events, but to remind them how satisfying being in a cinematic environment can be.

Besides offering a diverse slate of options besides movies, I believe that they need to look at ways to get patrons in the theatres more often, and as I’ve said before, this approach is a possible key: View link

Michael Furlinger on March 26, 2008 at 9:58 pm

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