On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 3:24 AM, JW <[email protected]> wrote: > > Prices were fairly stable from 1934 to 1960, with an average ticket price > > over those 27 years of $4.18. They did increase rapidly from $3.68 in > 1947 > > to $5.26 in 1953; I am assuming this bump is due to the initial reaction > to > > the popularity of television - I guess theaters tried to make up lost > > revenue from people staying home by raising prices. > > In 1948, the Supreme Court forced the studios to divest themselves of > their theaters. I'll guess that the studios charged the new theater > owners as much as they could, so theaters had to increase ticket > prices to be able to profit. > > To the larger point, I suppose that if Spielberg and Lucas see the > theatrical experience as becoming totally immersive 3-D with > smell-o-vision, the hardware that moviemakers and theaters will both > need could drive prices up substantially. It's hard to imagine that a > large audience is going to be willing to pay those prices, though.
Thanks for the piece about that Supreme Court decision - I forgot about that, and that probably is the reason for that price bump. This issue actually intersects for me with the question about cable and streaming subscriptions. I do need to scale back my costs in this issue, but one reason I have been able to justify what I have been paying is that when you have two parents and three kids in a family, it costs around $50 to take everyone to a movie and get one large tub of popcorn (even when, as usual, I sneak in the drinks and maybe some candy). The cost is pretty much the same if I leave the kids at home, since I am paying for a sitter (this calculation was in place when I had kids who were young enough to need a sitter; now that they are older the economics of it are changing for me). If I stay home even once a month under those conditions to watch a movie on TV or streaming, I can justify the cost of HBO, Showtime and Starz, or Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. Which is to say, movie ticket prices are very elastic, which is why I suppose they have been fairly stable, adjusted for inflation. I know a lot of people who, like me, are just about fed up with 3D movies, 90% of which clearly are using the 3D as an excuse to charge higher ticket prices, rather than to do better story-telling. If they charge $50/ticket (inflation adjusted) I don't really think you are going to see a lot of traditional blockbusters of the Batman/Superman Star Wars/Raiders of Lost Arc variety, since what busts the block on films like that are young people between the ages of 15 and 25 who see those movies 2 and 3 and more times. At $50 - $100 per ticket, movies will be more like middlebrow broadway musical theater, and have to appeal more to middle aged women than adolescent boys. But why do that, when you can keep your movie ticket prices low and still get an audience, which is something Andrew Lloyd Webber probably can't do. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
