Motion Picture News (Nov-Dec 1920)

November 6 , 1920 3519 Motion Picture News Vol. xxii November 6, 1920 No. xx The Sales Manager's Opportunity THE Theatre tax returns, recently made public by the Revenue Department, together with the amount collected from distributors on the five per cent film tax basis, brings up again the highly important subject of film rentals. $780,000,000 is, approximately, the gross box-office receipts for the year ending June 30, 1920; and the distributors, if we can judge by the film tax, took in about $86,000,000. Film rentals, then, amount to a little over 11% of the Exhibitors' receipts. This agrees very nicely with the estimates we made some time ago, when we figured that the distributor was getting, in film rentals, only between 10% and 15% of the theatres gross receipts. The figures received a storm of protest at the time. A number of small houses wrote in that they paid out for film rentals upwards of 35% of their box-office intake. Some sales managers — who evidently run their offices without any figures or without any respect for figures — wrote in ridiculing our estimates. But there the figures stand — cold figures. They say that the average theatre spends only 1 1 % of its receipts for its pictures. And yet we know that the great majority of theatres — comprising the small houses — spend around 35%. What's wrong? Here's a splendid opportunity for any sales manager to explain just why this remarkable discrepancv exists. Perhaps it should exist. Perhaps the little house should pay four or five times what the big theatre expends for pictures. But if so, why? Why the burden — and we know it is a very heavy burden — on the small theatre? Or is it that the present system of rentals is basicallv wrong and unfair; and being unfair, that it is uneconomic; and being uneconomic that it is designed to be dangerous and maybe disastrous to the industry Certainly it will prove disastrous if its scheme tends to crowd the small house to the wall or out of business entirely. Perhaps the big theatre will explain why its rental should be only one quarter of the small theatres. But the main issue, we should say, is up to the sales manager. We will cheerfully give all the space anyone wants for his explanation. The matter is of supreme importance. Then there's the subject of " specials " and the small theatre. The small theatre can't afford "specials" under present rental prices. One exhibitor puts the whole thing in a nutshell when he says, in a letter; " I lose on them, no matter which way I jump." He's dead right. And every other small house in the country is in exactly the same boat. So what is the situation here? Hadn't we best stop beating around the bush and come straight out into the open? Is the "special" picture excluded from the small house? Is the distributor's plan on " specials " geared up only to the big theatre? Is this simply or largely a " first run" business? A " special," remember, is simply a better picture — better than the kind that have been made and like the kind that are being made in larger numbers, the new kind, which soon will be an average or simply good picture. Are we to exclude good pictures from the small houses? Is it necessary? If so, it would seem to be good business to say so, to admit it, and to go about making cheap pictures only for the little house. This considerably disturbs our idea of the motion picture — that it is a community entertainment business; and we know perfectly well that most every small house and its patrons want good pictures just as much as anv big theatre. We were informed the other day that a certain inexpensively made brand of comedies had a distribution of nine thousand theatres, whereas average feature distribution is less than thirty-four hundred theatres. But the point is: if the small house can't play the high rental good picture why force them? Why drive them into bankruptcy? Why break what we call the backbone of the business — the eighty per center? Of course, we know that distribution is wrong. Rentals are wrongly graded. We know that. But the matter is so very important that certainlv its solution can't be very long delayed. Its a big subject and a tough one. And it will require big men to tackle it. If any sales manager does reorder rentals successfully we have an idea he can invite the President of his concern out of his chair. Distribution is the biggest problem facing the business today. WM. A. JOHNSTON