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AN EXHIBITOR^S PROBLEMS IN 1927
Eric T. Clarke*
FOR the year which has passed since I last addressed your body I have only one fundamental change in policy to report. All the rest of what I have to say today represents continued development of policies already in effect a year ago. This one change is the elimination of the split week and the adoption in its place of a double feature program.
For the benefit of those who are not familiar with the first-run picture situation in Rochester, I should explain that we run three first-run downtown picture houses: the Eastman, seating 3,350; the Piccadilly, seating 2,200; and the Regent, seating 1,800. It has for several years been our policy to buy blocks totaling some 200 pictures, securing these pictures on an interchangeable basis, so that upon screening they may be assigned to the house best suited to play them. I do not feel that it would be appropriate for me at this time to discuss the merits or demerits of block booking. The problems at present under consideration in connection with block booking do not apply to those who, like ourselves, need in the year more than 200 features for first-run showing in the same town.
For a city the size of Rochester it is clear that there will rarely, if ever, be more than 100 pictures in a season's output that are worthy of a week's run. In the spring, when the companies' projected output for the season is published, we cannot be sure just which pictures are going to be included in this hundred, but our experience has shown that where we have the choice of the entire season's product, the purchase in block of some 200 pictures will assure us of practically all the good ones which we naturally want.
The problem of what to do with the remainder has always been a hard one. Up to the end of 1926 we continued the policy of occasional split weeks. By ''split weeks" I mean running one picture four days (Sunday to Wednesday) and another the three remaining days of the week. By introducing a split week once or twice a month in one or the other of our two smaller houses (taking care never to split both houses in the same week), we were able to keep playing close to release date. Good and poor quality pictures seem to come along about evenly all the time, and it is necessary to avoid the ac
* General Manager, Eastman Theater, Rochester, N, Y.
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