Year book of motion pictures (1951)

days of 506 paid admissions, or an average of 1.7 per family. Of particular significance is the way attendance leveled off after the first few weeks and fluctuated in accordance with llie popularity of the picture presentations and the competition we faced on "free" television. (If Sugar Ray Rohinson had hit Jake LaMotta as hard as lie hit our box office the night of the title fight, his victim would still he flying through the air.) I !)elieve that Phonevision's high rate of patronage is of vital importance to all producers of entertainment during these days of ileclining box offices. It indicates that the public is just as willing as ever to pay for good entertainment and that many people are more willing to pay for it in the home than in the theater. Early in the test, our I'honevision ■300" began to grow highly selective of the entertainment purchased, a trend which became more pronounced as the test progressed. On the overall average, each picture was seen by 2r) per cent of its potential audience, but \ariations between pictures ranged from eight per cent of the possible audience for (lie picture that was "knocked out" by Sugar Ray, to 60 per cent for one that had its first showing on New Year's Day. Excluding these two more or less abnormal extremes, patronage of individual pictures ranged from nine per cent to 47 per cent of the possible audience. If you project our overall average against a potential audience of 10,000,000 television sets (it is expected that there will be 40 to aO million sets in the country within a few years) the producer's average net return per picture is 11,2,50,000. If you project the reliiriis from our 10 pictures with poorest patronage against 10,000,000 TV receivers, the average net return per picture to the producers is |600,000. If you project our best playing picture, the net return to the producer would be $2,983,000. Vet even these projections do not tell the full story, since our regular pattern of exhibition provided for only three showings of a picture, and I do not believe that three showings are enough to develop a picture's full potential. As a partial check on this point, we showed one picture four times. On its regular three showings it was patronized by 93 test families, 31 per cent of our possible audience. On its fourth showing, a Saturday matinee, it drew 17 customers (six per cent), a figure which was exceeded by only two other Saturday matinees in the entire test. Here is a significant indication of the depth of the new market Phonevision opens for motion pictures:— although every one of the 90 features shown during the test was more than two years old, and some more than 10, reports from our test families for the first two months show that an average of only 18 per cent of our reporting test families who saw these pictures on Phonevision had previously seen them in the theaters. In other words, four Phonevision patrons out of five were brand-new customers and more than 92 per cent of our reporting customers said they preferred to see pictures in their homes rather than in the theaters. As a further check, we asked each family at the end of each month of the test to tell how many members of the families had previously seen in the theaters each movie shown during the month. March results are not yet available, but on the average, the pictures shown during January and February were reported as previously seen by only 25 per cent of the test family members who responded to our survey. These reports indicate that the new audience found by Phonevision may approximate in size the audience for the same pictures which were drawn into the theaters by Hollywood's most adroit and effective salesmanship during the years of greatest theater patronage. If this conclusion is discounted 20, 30, or even 50 per cent, it still adds countless millions to the j)otential value of the feature films reposing in film vaults— a value which is many times greater than that added by the sale of films to television at rates sponsors can offbrd to pay. In considering the overall effect of Phonevision on the movie industry, I'd like to quote Robert L. Wright, former motion picture expert for the Justice Department's anti-trust division. "The independent exhibitor is justified in his fear of the threat of television," claims Wright, "but he is under a misapprehension in thinking that Phonevision is the threat. What hurts him, and will hurt him worse in the future, arc free motion pictures, subsidized by advertisers." "Inferior product, subsidized and delivered free, will be greater competition than good quality pictures for which people have to pay over a system such as Phonevision." SUMMARY OF ATTENDANCE OF PHONEVISION TEST SHOWINGS Title April Showers . . . Welcome Stranger Actual Return From Phonevision Test 111.00 179.00 767 Pro.iectecI Return Based On 10.000,000 Television Receivers $3,700,000 5.970.000 Pro,iected Producer's Share at 50% $1,850,000 2.986.000