Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1963)

The Viet* frw OuUiJe mmmmmmmmmmmmm by ROLAND pendaris ^m^hmm Theatres — Legit & Movie I have a simple suggestion for improving the customer relations of the motion picture industry. Just send more people to New York Broadway stage theatres. One visit to the average Times Square legit playhouse and the customer will really appreciate his motion picture theatre. Right now there are only a dozen stage shows on Broadway. For the most part, they tax the patience of the theatregoer in a variety of ways. And every way offers another lesson in the superiority of the motion picture theatre, if the theatre owner would only realize and exploit the fact. I doubt, for example, whether any but the most impoverished theatre owner would permit his seats to deteriorate the way the $4.00 (and up) balcony seats have almost literally rotted away in the legit houses. The Broadway theatregoer who spends less than $6 for a seat these days is likely to be sitting at a tilt, because the forward end of his seat, the middle and the back have fallen apart at differing rates of decline. When it comes to building strong feeling on the part of the customers, the prices for candies and refreshments at the Broadway stage houses are powerful indeed. The world's most expensive orange drink, combined with the world's most elusive free water fountains, makes the automatic soda machine in the lobby of your neighborhood theatre look doubly attractive. ■< ► The non-charms of the Broadway stage emporium start long before you enter its lounge or auditorium. The first traumatic experience comes when you scan the drama page and look at the ticket prices. There is one show, for example, with a cast of four and an abbreviated running time. A seat in the orchestra for any evening performance costs $7.50. That's for one seat. And as if the ticket price isn't bad enough, there's the fact that you can't go whenever you want to; you generally have to buy tickets in advance. The other Saturday matinee, a couple I know decided to see a comedy which has won wide acclaim. They bought tickets in the morning, then came back to see the show. The price of a seat in the middle of the balcony (they call it a mezzanine, but it is a balcony) was $4,00. If the show had lived up to their expectations and the theatre had been packed, the price would still have been pretty high. But the show was a disappointment and the theatre was half empty, they reported. The half-emptiness of the theatre was made somewhat painful for the $4.00 ticket purchasers by the fact that in short order the occupants of cheaper seats filtered down. They found themselves no better off than people who paid considerably less for their tickets. The whole idea of the reserved-seat, different-price scale of the Broadway house seems to wind up making theatregoing less pleasurable. In the first place, the greatest number of seats is always in the highest price range. In the second place, you can often find yourself in the unhappy position of being pinned down in a bad seat while good seats go empty — or, conversely, of having paid more for your seat than the guy who winds up sitting next to you. At a road show movie, the ticket scale usually has no more than two prices, orchestra and balcony; but there are often as many as five differently priced tickets for the very same performance of a Broadway stage play. I have recited these specific attributes of legitimate theatregoing along the Great White Way because I believe each of them presents a lesson in what not to do to the customer, and perhaps the motion picture industry can avoid some of the stage's mistakes. Where we can't avoid the mistakes, maybe we can somehow profit by them. The first mistake is price. I don't care how many times a Broadway hit gets away with a $9 top. For every such success there are a dozen failures. And now that the off-Broadway theatre in New York is running into trouble it is worth pointing out that the off-Broadway trouble started when the off-Broadway shows raised their prices and ceased to be such great bargains. When you charge an exorbitant price for a show, whether it be stage, screen or closed circuit television, you sooner or later acquire a dissatisfied and then an evaporating audience. I am inclined to think that one of the reasons for the failure of some of the big pictures of recent years has been that they just set too high a ticket price. I am not suggesting that the ticket buyer turns away because the price is high. What I do believe is that the ticket purchaser who, after seeing the movie, feels that it was too high priced then urges his friends not to waste their money. The high price leads to bad word-of-mouth when the picture doesn't live up to the price tag. The second error which Broadway shows make — and the movies shouldn't — is to make the ticket price structure so complicated. There are advantages to reserved seats, and they need no defense, but how can you justify a higher price for the 22nd row of the orchestra, for example, than for the first row of the mezzanine? The ticket price structure should be simple. While we are on the subject of the price structure I think it well to mention the ticket broker. The broker, who can be defended as carrying on a legitimate business as a sort of commercial factor for the theatre, is a new-business discourager. When you find you can't buy tickets to a hit at the boxoffice, but can get them at a broker's mark-up, you begin to lose confidence in the box office. When motion picture theatres — as they sometimes do in New York — have tickets sold through brokers, they are hurting themselves in the long run. But more imporTherefore, I think there should be supplementary boxoffice wintres, whenever purchasing tickets at a boxoffice is made more difficult, I believe the long-term influence on patronage is bad. Therefore, I think there should be supplementary box office windows when business warrants. M ► The Broadway stage has been in a steady decline. Possibly television is partly responsible, but I think the main reason is a disregard of the normal practices of good business. You can't keep on overpricing, under-servicing and inconveniencing your customers and expect them to continue as loyal patrons. What happens is that they shop around more, they buy the hits, where they are willing at the outset to put up with the hazards, and they skip the average attractions. Then, after a while, they become more and more selective even when the critics raved. You can see this sort of thing happening in the movies, too. Merely to say that the audience is growing more selective is to ignore some of the important reasons for that selectivity. If a customer gets no place to park his car, or has to sit in a delapidated seat at the theatre, he becomes more selective. The attraction has to be pretty darned good to get him to put up with the shortcomings of the theatre. Page 8 Film BU LLETI N August 5, 1943