Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1963)

What They're Talking About □ □ □ In the Movie Business □ □ □ NEWSPAPERS VS. TV. Our good friend, Joe Exhibitor, who contributes many constructive suggestions to these pages, offers another. "Aren't we long overdue", he inquires, "for a thorough reappraisal of the relative merits of newspapers, on the one hand, and television and radio on the other, as advertising media. From time to time, I've read Film BULLETIN'S ideas on this subject, and I share them, but it seems that the people who run the film companies are slow to break with traditional habits in advertising their product. There is a whole mountain of evidence that the newspapers are less effective as an advertising force than TV and radio. We have seen this demonstrated very decisively this Summer again in the areas where we operate theatres, but most of the distributors are too timid to take the bold step toward full-scale use of the broadcast media. You might imagine that they favor the press because it offers a more graphic method of displaying film ads, or because the newspapers go out of their way to give our advertisements the most advantageous positions to draw the attention of readers. Or, is it because the papers give movies a better publicity 'break' than they give TV, sports or other recreational competition? Or, could it be that the press is a valuable public relations ally of movie business? Hell, no. Most newspapers charge us premium rates for advertising; they jam all of our ads together on a crowded page; they give TV and sports much more free space than movies; and, as for public relations, they print every crackpot accusation ever uttered against movies as a "wicked" social force, while they fill their front pages with all kind of circulation-building stories about sex crimes, dope addiction, gangsterism, etc. What of the comparative effectiveness of newspapers and TV in selling movies? Can there be doubt in any showman's mind that scenes on television have a far stronger impact than the printed advertisement? Every theatreman knows that the trailer on his screen is the greatest single medium available to promote a film. We only wish that we could have a captive audience of many more thousands than our theatre accommodates to see each trailer. And television makes that possible. Why, then, don't we us TV more? Disney is the one film producer who uses TV consistently to promote his pictures, and it's no accident that his company has been the most consistently successful one since television became a national means of communication. Radio, too, is more valuable to us than the newspapers, because the young people of this country, when they're not watching TV, are listening to portable, car and bedside radios. We had several saturation campaigns for films in our territory this Summer, and they were enormously successful, mostly, I'm sure, because they made intensive use of the broadcasting media. We checked the youngsters who came to our theatres and learned that most of them saw and heard the ads on TV and radio. I feel that our business would be much healthier if we cut expenditures in newspapers to the bone and poured most of our promotion money into the other media." AA TROUBLES. There is a strong feeling in some quarters that a change in management is impending at Allied Artists. A Wall Street source informed us several weeks ago that the company would show a loss in excess of $2 million for the year ended June 30. It also is heard that returns on "55 Days at Peking" have been so disappointing to producer Samuel Bronston that it is unlikely AA will get any more of his productions for distribution. The company's tight financial condition made it necessary to pass the regular quarterly dividend on the 5V2% cumulative preferred stock, which was to be paid Sept. 15. Some significance is attached, too, to the recent sale of substantial stock holdings by executive vice president George D. Burrows and board member Sherrill C. Corwin. The SEC report on security transactions for June revealed that Burrows disposed of 9200 shares of common, retaining 5586, while Corwin unloaded 5500 of the 6500 shares he held.