One size fits none

[by Nancy] (YES, Life interfering with blogging... blah, blah, blah. It is now my mission to post more often than Sunni. Get ready, people.)

Many thanks to Todd for calling my attention to this week's L.A. Times series inspired by a recent poll (conducted by the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg) on the entertainment consumption habits of teens and young adults. To me, the two most interesting of these articles ("No Big Demand for the Small Screen" and "Far Removed from the Multiplex") concerned not necessarily the specific influences of entertainment media on the young 'uns, but the ways in which they access their entertainment.

Movie exbihibition has been a hot topic of late, with people like Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner proposing monumental changes to a business that has functioned in a relatively steady state for decades, and theater owners struggling to keep established film distribution windows in place (and patrons in their theaters) for as long as possible.

Being something of a film purist myself (and, thus, still completely in love with the idea of sitting in a darkened theater with strangers, experiencing the interaction of light with sound, audience with movie, and peanut butter M&M's with buttered popcorn and diet Coke), I have to access the argument from an economic standpoint in order to be truly fair. And thinking about it from that perspective (while talking the point to death with all sorts of people), I've prepared myself for the fact that, like it or not, the system is poised for a massive change. It has simply become infeasible from a business perspective for the large film studios to agree to keep distribution windows in place.

Reading both of the L.A. Times articles reinforced the notion that film exhibition is about to look vastly different. One of the primary reasons is that the theatrical experince holds very little value for most of the filmgoing public. This is not surprising, of course, but actually hearing these sentiments from a representative sampling of Hollywood's most coveted demographic is sobering.  Case in point:

"The poll found that many teens and young adults would be happy if that window were eliminated altogether. Asked where they'd prefer to watch a new movie if it were simultaneously available at home and in theaters, about a third said they would choose to stay at home, and another third said it depended on the movie. Going to movies at theaters still has appeal, particularly for younger teens, but among respondents ages 21 to 24, 56% said they wanted to see the new movie at home, and only 9% said they would rather travel to a theater."

Wow. 9% would rather not have to go to a theater to see a new movie. So, basically, keeping distribution windows in place makes little sense economically for film distributors and it runs completely counter to what customers in the target demographic want. Sounds like a GREAT way of doing business to me.

Purist that I am, I was happy to see that most in this sampling are not at present terribly interested in watching full-length televison shows or films on wireless devices or video iPods. And I don't blame them. I could never watch anything requiring an attention span longer than a couple of minutes on a screen that small. Then again, I am the daughter of a man who bought a large-screen televison, got it home, realized it was TOO large for the living room when the rest of the family got motion sickness from watching it, and remedied the situation by knocking out living room wall so that the space could be expanded by a few feet to accommodate his new toy. So I may not be the best person to ask about this one.

Interesting to note, however, were this group's reasons for shunning the small-est screen:

"Many young people said they were intrigued by the notion of getting their entertainment on devices such as cellphones and iPods. But two major obstacles have so far dampened their enthusiasm: the cost and the uneven quality of the experience."

With time, both of these issues will be handled -- prices will decrease while quality improves. And I imagine that convenience and accessibility (being able to watch what you want, where you want, when you want) will trump screen size in the end. Even now, according to the poll, over 40% of this group would rather watch movies on their PCs, many of which are portable and all of which offer users the opportunity to access their entertainment in personal, highly customizable way. Clearly, one screen size no longer fits all.

So where does that leave the current state of film exhibition? Looking...ummm...not so current, if you ask me.

Comments

[Steve Fallen]

As one of the declining numbers of people who would still prefer to see most films (at least those worth seeing) in a traditional screening venue (with the appropriate selections nearby of M&M's, butterfingers, and popcorn) I would just like to comment that most home theater arrangments do not compare to the real theater experience. Although I would be glad to be able to skip the on-screen advertising, previews and previews of previews, once I get past all that and the feature actually begins, there is no comparison to a quiet, dark and well air-conditioned theater's capacity to capture my entire attention and focus it on what is happening on the screen. If the purpose of a film is to take us places we've never been or to help us to understand things we never did, that can only happen in a theater where there are no phones ringing (usually) or dogs wanting to go outside. I will always prefer a nice theater to the best home setup.

Also Nancy, I happen to know that the real reason your father tore out the wall in your home was not so much to accommodate his wide screen as to reclaim the space taken up by the the study room he had built for you and your brother which neither of you ever used.