Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1957)

WHAT IS THE MOVIEGOER'S AGE. SEX. TASTE'!1 THE THEATHEMAN SHOULD KNOW HES CUSTOMER Patterns of Patronage [ CxcluAiUe ^BULLETIN Jeature by LEONARD SPINRAD Counting the house is an ancient and honorable preoccupation of the motion picture industry. At times, however, it may be that audiences need "casing" as well as counting. The focus of all the concerted effort of the motion picture industry is a window in a small cubicle, which a man, woman or child approaches with money in hand. The emphasis has always been on the number of people at the boxoffice, rather than what kind of people and in what proportion. Customers come, of course, in all shapes, sizes, races, creeds, ages and the standard set of sexes. But some ages and one sex go more frequently than the others. Indeed, there seems to be a very discernible pattern of moviegoing available from the handful of studies which have been conducted. This pattern is not just an interesting conversational sidelight for an industry which sells its wares over and over again to its customers. The profile of patronage can be a guide to every phase of motion picture operations from the studio story department to the theatre boxoffice. While national statistical studies of attendance have been made with a highly regarded degree of accuracy and on a continuing basis in recent years, there has not been as much attention paid to the composition of the audience. We know how many people attend better than we know what kind of people. The profile of the customer has been less thoroughly pursued. Some of the customer studies and surveys have been made by or for theatre circuits; some have been made as part of larger research undertakings for magazines or newspapers. Some have been carried on by individual theatre men. It would be manifestly unfair to try to combine all these various efforts into one over-all statistical summary; but by assembling and comparing the conclusions of the various surveys, we can get a better picture of the average motion picture John Q. Public. THE MOVIEGOING AGE National Theatres made a study of the patrons of six neighborhood houses in Los Angeles in 1955. The two largest age groupings were 21-30 years old (41% of the total) and 31-40 years old (21.9%). Other age group percentages were 7.7% in the up-to-14 age bracket, 16.3% in the 12-20-year-old group, 7.5% in the 41-50 area, 3.4% aged 51-60 and 1% over 60. Back in 1951, on the basis of a big movie quiz contest conducted by 123 Detroit theatres, it was stated that the average "actively interested" patron was about 40 years old. A single-picture audience check in Rochester, N. Y. a bit more than a year ago, the picture being "Indian Fighters," turned up the 21-35 age group as the largest, with the 35-50-year-olds second and teenagers last. The same proportion was reported in another Rochester test involving "Three Stripes in the Sun". A 1956 survey for Look magazine by Alfred Poiitz Research, Inc., found that the peak motion picture attendance group was aged 20-29, with the 15-19 and 10-14 groups virtually tied as next best. These three groups, according to Poiitz, accounted for more than half of the total movie audience above the age of 10 during the month of February 1956. (Politz's survey was confined to moviegoers ten years old or older.) There are plenty of reasons for challenging, if you so choose, the accuracy of one or more of the aforementioned surveys. But it is perhaps more productive to put them together and try to derive some fairly unanimous conclusions. Beyond a doubt, all the cited surveys point to the 20thirtyish age group as the top single bracket. Whether this extends into the forties is, to judge by the differences in the various figures, a moot point. As for the teenagers, they would appear to be a strong but secondary audience group. (In the Elma Theatre in Elma, Iowa, possibly not typical because it is such a small town, with a population of under (Continued on Page 10) Film BULLETIN January 21, 1957 Page 9