It's a curious thing that while my website traffic is up, my revenue is down. Way down. My daily visitor count hasn't been this high since last spring, but I have never seen these kinds of low revenues. It's a combination of low click-through rates and low payments for impressions.
The area of the population dominating multiplex viewing is no longer visiting text-centric movie review sites. Take away the teenagers, and this site is gaining in popularity. Include them, and it's nearly stagnant, with their decreasing numbers offsetting increases across other age groups.
I spoke to a multiplex manager this week and he acknowledged that every year the number of adults attending his theater drops. He said that, except for "event movie" weekends, the Friday night/Saturday night crowd may be as much as 80% under age 20.
For children and young adults to continue seeing a movie per week, they need to be able to make the money and it's an open question whether that will continue to happen. Some get that much (or more) as an allowance, but what happens if one or both parents are laid off?
One would think multiplexes would be doing everything possible to widen their potential customer base in case the bottom of the teen marketplace begins to crumble. But that does not appear to be the case.
If movie theaters begin to suffer, it won't just be the economy. That may be a contributing factor, but poor movie selection and unacceptable quality control will be just as important. Maybe a mass wave of multiplex failures will be just what's necessary to function as a wake-up call. Theaters belong to the service industry. It's time they started delivering true "service." Those who pay for the experience of seeing a movie deserve to enjoy it, not endure it.
Article - ReelThoughts January 18, 2009: "Multiplex Tales"
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