Motion Picture News (Sept-Oct 1918)

2004 Motion Picture New. CHICAGO, though the second largest city in the nation, presents the best opportunity for a discussion of the directory style of advertising, the plan which prevails there and which has been found invaluable by the theatres using it. Now in dealing with the situation in some of the largest cities in the country we have found that motion picture theatres have been up against a serious proposition on account of the large number of newspapers that have to be used to cover the field and the high rate that is charged by them for advertising space. The newspaper situation in Chicago is favorable to the motion pictures in the small number of papers that have to be used. There are only two Sunday papers since the combination of the Herald and Examiner, the other being the Tribune. There are four afternoon papers, the American, Daily News, Journal and the Post. The latter can be left out of consideration, for it is rated by Lord and Thomas as having a circulation of only 55,477, which appears negligible when you know that the Daily News hovers around the half million mark and the Sunday papers pass it. Using five papers to cover a city of nearly three millions does not seem too much to ask. But when we look further into the situation in Chicago we find one very peculiar thing, and that is that there is not now a single big, up-to-date downtown house. In short, there is in the business section of the city nothing in the same class with the Rialto or the California or the Circle. The really fine houses of the city would technically be classed as neighborhood theatres, though some of them do make an appeal to the whole city. And out of the 345 theatres operating in the city, only twenty of these are downtown theatres, and most of them make their appeal purely to the people passing on the street rather than through any concerted publicity drive through the newspapers. Chicago divides itself into the North Side, South Side and West Side, and therefore the theatres are largely left to appeal to those separate communities. Now the argument that is generally put up by the proprietor of the usual neighborhood theatre is that he cannot see the use of paying the rate for advertising in a newspaper covering the whole city when he only wants to reach the people of his neighborhood. In a sense that is true and to an extent it may be called a necessary evil, but in cities where the neighborhood theatres have advertised regularly every day they have found that it has brought them patronage from other sections of the city. Especially is this true of houses that are so located that they can be easily reached by the automobile patrons, even though they may be at a distance. It can readily be seen that after a picture finishes the run of say a week at the downtown theatre there are still a large number of people left who want to see it and who will take the trouble to go to a neighborhood house for that purpose. In one city, with which we are familiar and where there was a daily advertising by the theatres, together with a " chart " printed on Sunday showing the attractions for each day of the week at all of the advertising houses, the increase of business at several of the better neighborhood theatres was marked and the managers found that a considerable portion of the increased business came from sections of the city other than his own. We know of another manager who took charge of a large house a considerable distance from the business section and which had been a failure under a succession of managements and made it a success, largely through advertising. He found that three-fifths of his evening patrons came in automobiles. But, aside from that point, the main fact is that the manager wants to fill his theatre. It doesn't matter to him whether they come from his own neighborhood or some other. And it is also a fact that day after day more and more people are getting tired of having to walk a half dozen blocks or more to see what their neighborhood house is I showing. Rather than take this trouble these people will go either to the downtown hous.es, whose bills j they can find in the news • paper, or they will stay at home. It the neighborhood I theatres were advertising only a few lines each day to give the title of the picture and the name of the star the situation would | be different. Of course, if the particular patron did not care for the bill at his neighborhood theatre which he saw in the newspaper he would probably come across some other picture that he wanted to see and go to some other theatre. And this would even itself up very shortly. In one case one theatre would get the patron for that particular night and in the other case another would, and the chances are much in favor of increased business for those that do advertise regularly. Neighborhood theatre advertising really had its origin in the Chicago Tribune. It was at the time of the appearance of the serial " The Adventures of Kathleen," and the paper was interested with Selig in its exploitation. The story appeared in the paper and was syndicated to other papers over the country, the first time such a thing had been done, while the newspaper itself arranged all sorts of advertising plans. The Tribune afterwards was interested in many other pictures. So the newspaper began to list in its columns the theatre that was showing this serial, and these appeared from time to time, thereby becoming the first of the directory advertising. Gradually the theatres began to advertise other pictures besides the serial and they grew into regular advertisers in the Tribune. In the copy of the Sunday Tribune which we are reproducing on the opposite page there are seventy-two theatres advertising, and only nine out of the number are downtown houses, though technically neighborhood houses like the Central Park and Woodlawn are the finest houses in the city. And every day during the week these same theatres use the Tribune, though some of them use slightly smaller space, as a glance at the pages from the Sunday and from the Friday issues shows. This advertising is grouped together under a heading " Motion Picture Directory." Legitimate and vaudeville advertising is handled on another page, so that there can be no confusion. This is typical directory' advertising. You will note that the Sunday space does not vary greatly from that used during the week. Most of the theatres occupy just as much space every day in the week as they do on Sunday. The result is that you do not find in the Chicago newspapers the large Sunday advertising that is the rule in other cities. In fact, the only two theatres shown here which even attempt to vary the style of their displays on different productions are the Casino in advertising " Crashing Through to Berlin " and the Playhouse with " The Vigilantes." This is all the more emphasized in the Daily News, which carries the advertisements of eighty theatres and average smaller space for them than the Tribune gets. We show the Friday and Saturday pages from the Daily News. Now the question that is naturally asked is : " What does the newspaper give these theatres ? " And the answer is : " Practically nothing." In other words, the picture houses are advertising for the value of the directory itself and not on account of reading notices that they get. As a matter of fact, that would be impossible in a city the size of Chicago, for if only a few lines were given each theatre there would be columns of space taken up and little of it read. The Tribune formerly had an interesting motion picture page and also ran a cut and story every day, but for some reason this was dropped more than a year ago. Under the heading " Right Off the Reel " there is some two columns of matter used each Sunday, and on several days of the week there appear reviews of (Continued on page 2014) Directory Plan Works in Chicago Two of the Newspapers Carry Every Day Advertisements of a Creditable per cent of Theatres