Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1957)

PATTERNS OF PATRONAGE JfonV« Provitlf ll<>livH frnm Tvnsions (Continued from Page 9) 1,000, exhibitor Charlie Jones made a month-long survey which showed that 25% of his total audience had been teen-agers, but 58% of the audience or more was older.) The core of the audience is then to be regarded as 20-35, with the next strongest groups at both ends of this age spectrum. Politz has the highest noted percentage for the teen-agers. THE MOVIEGOING SEX Until a few years ago, it had been generally assumed that more women than men went to the movies, and that the women picked the pictures when they went with men. So far as I know, nobody yet has come up with a reliable and completely provable story about who picks the pictures, husband or wife, but there are some statistics on the composition of the audience. The Willmark Service System checked patrons in 33 cities last year and came up with patronage figures of 48.5% women and 51.5% men. A couple of months later Sindlinger and Company reported that previous proportions had now been reversed and the national movie audience was now composed of 60% men and 40% women. While the exact percentages have not been constant, the preponderance of male attendance has been fairly continuous in the Sindlinger reports. Elma's Charlie Jones did not break down his audience study by sex in every age group, but his figures match the rest (where he used sex as the criterion) : 23% of his month's audience were women, 26% were men. MOVIEGOING CONSIDERATIONS A number of intrepid investigators have attempted to find out what influences a customer to go to the movies. This is a very difficult area of exploration. In the first place, moviegoers don't always know themselves why they chose to go to a particular movie — or even to the movies in general. In the second place, people don't always tell the truth when they are asked to give their reasons. (This is particularly the case with pictures whose attractions include sexy girls, for example.) But, admitting these difficulties, let us proceed to the data at hand. The previously mentioned Willmark survey said that 90.2% of the women gave escaping from nervous tension as their main reason for moviegoing, while 80.2% of the men gave a similar reason. In 1954 American theatres Corp. conducted interviews at 300 homes near one of its New England theatres on a related subject and found that the principal reason for attending a particular theatre was because it was nearby. Out of the total survey, 215 homes gave this answer. If these two fragmentary reports are to be considered as indicative, the prime attractions for moviegoing, then, are escape from real problems and the nearness of the theatre. Obviously, a prime attraction can overcome the indicated inertia of the moviegoer; a hot enough picture will draw its patronage from a larger area than the immediate environs. But this is the exception to the general rule. A further symptom can be found in a 1955 poll conducted by the National Theatres circuit among 16-20-year-olds. The chief type of picture preferred by the 16-20-year-olds was the musical, followed closely by comedy. As recent business has perhaps confirmed, Westerns were at the bottom of the ratings. Musicals and comedies, together or separately, must certainly be classified as prime escapist material. (So too are Westerns, but not on the same entertainment level.) It may be significant that the American Theatres Corp. survey, conducted at a morning hour when teen-agers would not usually be home, the teen-age National Theatres poll and the general Willmark investigation seem to point to the same general conclusions. THE MOVIEGOING RATE Weekly total motion picture attendance figures are not necessarily truly reflective of the number of people who go to the movies. One of the big problems for the industry is to determine how often the same people go to the movies, and how often certain classes of people do not go. Amercian Theatres found that 111 of its 300 respondents went once a week, and 23 twice a week, a response frankly out of proportion to the total national weekly attendance. On the other hand, the Milwaukee Journal made a study of 6,000 families in its area and discovered that only 10.4% of these families had a member who had attended a movie in the past week, while 29.4% of the families said none of their people had gone to the movies in over a year. Sindlinger's figures have indicated that about 10% of the people who go to the movies each week go twice, instead of just once. The significance of these reports, different as they are, lies in their very difference. The American Theatres survey was made in a lower middle class residential area within a mile of the theatre, in a city of some 100,000 population. The Milwaukee Journal report was based on 6,000 replies from all income classes and from all parts of the Milwaukee area. This helps to point up a pattern. The pattern is stressed by the Milwaukee findings that non-downtown houses in Milwaukee draw a growing share of the audience. The moviegoing rate, it appears from both studies, is influence by the closeness of the theatre and the level of economic life. The rate seems to be higher as the economic class goes lower, although there is no available study of moviegoing among the urban or rural poor. The lower middle class, in any case, seems to be inclined to go more often than the upper middle class. The rate of moviegoing also seems to go higher as the location of the theatre gets Page 10 Film BULLETIN January 21, 1957