Harvard business reports (1930)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

UNIVERSAL PICTURES CORPORATION 477 would have no difficulty in securing the additional films it would have to buy from other companies to complete the programs of such theaters. If the company acquired theaters in the small urban centers, it not only would be establishing fixed outlets for its own pictures in such centers but also would be placing itself in a position, since it would need outside pictures, to offer its theaters as outlets for the pictures of other producer-distributors, which for the most part had none of their own theaters in such places. Inasmuch as the company then would be a customer of one or more of the other producer-distributors, the executives of the Universal Pictures Corporation expected to have less difficulty in selling its pictures to them for use in their theaters. If the company acquired most of its theaters in small urban centers, it would secure wide distribution through such outlets but would find it necessary to acquire a greater number of theaters to secure a given gross revenue from that distribution than from distribution through a group of larger theaters in metropolitan cities. Methods of acquiring control of theaters were varied; new theater buildings might be erected on land owned or leased by the company; old theater buildings might be purchased; or a part or an entire interest in a corporation owning or controlling a theater or chain of theaters might be acquired. As a result, the outlay of the company in each case would be different, so that it was impossible for the executives to estimate in any way the relative cost of a large number of small town theaters as compared with the outlay for control of a smaller number of large theaters. If it decided to operate small theaters exclusively, the company definitely would lose the opportunities for advertising an exploitation which the operation of large theaters strategically located would present. The directors of the company decided to build up a chain of theaters in towns of from 5,000 to 50,000 population, concentrating their theater-buying efforts in those sections of the United States in which the company's distribution was small. After a few theaters had been acquired, the stockholders of the Universal Pictures Corporation organized the Universal Chain Theaters Corporation to own and operate theaters and to continue building up the chain by purchasing, erecting, and securing control of additional theaters. The object of this company was to make