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that with a trailer company the trailer business is compelled to bear the entire cost, whereas with a motion picture company the cost can be borne jointly by trailers and other films. This fact is of significance even though the trailer business of the trailer company is substantially larger in total than the volume of the trailer business of the picture producer.
The pressure for free trailer service was less severe in 1929 than it had been originally. In the theaters owned by Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc., obviously no question would arise. In fact, since the company had been charged for the trailers of its pictures, some actual saving might result. With other theaters, even by 1929, the conditions had changed with the more general use of percentage pricing. In some cases, provision had been made for free service on all trailers to exhibitors who, buying on a percentage arrangement, agreed also to use the entire production of that producer. There was apparently a trend in the same direction on all trailers for pictures sold on a percentage basis. Producers were adopting this policy on the theory that such trailers furnished real advertising for the pictures in which both distributor and exhibitor were financially interested. From the distributor's viewpoint, moreover, the policy offered an opportunity for bargaining which he was not loath to utilize. Such opportunities did not exist when the trailers were sold by individual trailer companies.
Recognizing the closeness of the interests of distributors and exhibitors in this matter of advertising, several attempts have been made to develop cooperative advertising. At times this has been confined to groups of pictures which in the opinion of the distributor are of special value. Such pictures may really be worth substantially more than the average program picture and yet, since the exhibitor does a very ordinary job in advertising, such groups of pictures have not achieved the results which the distributor believed that they should have and which in fact they did achieve in other sections. Such groups of pictures are as a rule not sold until after the key-city engagements have been placed. Thus the