Harrison's Reports (1962)

Bilmi as •ec+tui oUuw matUr January 4, 1921, at the post office at New fork, New York, under Uh aot af Marefc |, iit». Yew* Subscription Rate*: Published Weekly by United States $17.00 Harrison's Reports, Inc., U. S. Insular Possessions... 19.00 Canada and Mexico 19.00 A MotIon picture Reviewing Service 1600 Broadway Other Countries 19.50 New York 19, N. Y. 4Sc a Copy Devoted Chiefly to the Interests of the Exhibitors COlumbui 6-4484 Established July h 1919 Martin Starr, Editor A REVIEWING SERVICE FREE FROM THE INFLUENCE OF FILM ADVERTISING Vol. XLIV SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1962 No. 33 MAYBE, IT'S NOT YET "30" It wasn't so long ago, in American journalism, when a reporter in reaching the end of his story would write "30." On many newspapers, it is still common practice. As the oldest trade paper in the motion picture industry, we find ourselves upholding some of the old, standard practices as we embrace the new ones for their values to our format of operation. The caption of this editorial is indicative of what may lay ahead of us, - "30" - the end of the road. Verily, this may be the last edition of Harrison's Reports. In fact, in this one-page issue, and its significance to our subscribers, we find ourselves dealing with nothing else other than our present economic condition, the fate of the weekly and what its future prospects are of continuing publication. For this once, we're by-passing the news, reviews and other inter-trade material we'd usually carry in an issue. To be frank about it, for quite some time we too have become victim of the economic anemia that has infected the bloodstream of the biggest portion of the trade paper body of the motion picture industry. We can list the reasons, but the major ones are too obvious. With subscriptions the only source of our revenue and subsistence, that had to remain staple or else we'd lose ground. Instead, we lost many a subscriber in the past few years. He (the exhibitor) either lost his theatre, had to sell out, close it up entirely, or go into some other nature of business. Closing of Theatres Costly to All If we're to deal in figures (checked and authenticated) 6,000 theatres have been forced to go out of business in a little more than a decade. But, it's been the past few years when the closings of the smaller theatres, -the mainstay of our circulation, - reached staggering and costly proportions. Most exhibitors (even the small ones) today have joined some kind of booking combine. One such set-up can embrace several hundred theatres. All it finds need for is one subscription to Harrison's Reports. Our own production costs have gone up considerably. To meet these rising costs we dared raise our subscription fee a year ago, ($2, the first such increase in more than 25 years) and that was met with protest on the part of some subscribers. In fact, we suffered quite a few outright cancellations. (over)