I didn't major in business when I was in college, but there are times when I look at the way some companies are run and I just shake my head. How can the people who run them, who get paid mind boggling sums of to make good business decisions do things that are so stupid?
Case and point for me is the music business. The people running the music industry had to see the problems that the internet and digital file sharing was going to cause them. If they didn't see it coming they are even stupider than I thought they were. They had to know that people would be able to share music on the internet. Instead of using it to their advantage and providing a service with that technology (and being proactive) the industry did nothing until they started losing vast sums of money. Their solution? This is the brilliant part: Their solution was to sue their customers. Finally Steve Jobs entered the picture to stop the insanity with a really smart (and simple) idea that became iTunes. Apple offered an online store where people could pay $.99 for a song and (usually) about $9.99 for the whole album. iTunes is cheaper than buying the hard copy CD in a store like Best Buy. As I am writing this, iTunes has sold well over 1 billion songs and is on their way to selling 2 billion. Of course the pinheads that run the music biz are wanting to start charging more money per song. Apple bails them out and their greed makes them blind to the good thing they have.
The movie theater companies are doing things that are just as stupid. Overall film grosses this year were up over last year, but ticket sales are down. Again, I didn't go to business school, but I am clever enough to see that increased ticket prices are making it look like more people are going. The fact of the matter is moviegoing (in the traditional sense of going to see a first run feature in a theater) has been on the decline for years. There are a lot of factors for this. Home theaters are more sophisticated and create a theater-like experience at home. The window of time between a film's theatrical run and its home video release is still shrinking. It used to be about a 6 month gap between the theatrical run and the home vid release. Now it's dwindled to about 3 months. People don't have to wait as long, it makes them more likely to wait and see the film at home. As I mentioned, high ticket prices are also keeping people away. Concessions are ridiculously high as well. In LA it would cost upwards of $75 to take a family of 4 to the movies, if you also got popcorn and soda.
But the real culprit in all this is that the theater owners have allowed the moviegoing experience to just flat out suck. Theaters are manned mostly be teenagers earning minimum wage -- you get what you pay for. In our litigious society I am sure these businesses don't want to deal with getting sued if they throw disruptive people out. So essentially they are creating a situation in which a few idiots can ruin the fun for everybody else. Theater chains are trying to squeeze every last penny they can, that' why you have to sit through 30 minutes of commercials before you sit through 15 minutes of trailers.
Worst of all are your fellow patrons. The people are rude and insensitive to the concept that there are other people watching the movie besides them. Cell phones are a huge problem, both people taking calls during a movie or text messaging. Idiotic people take small children to the movie, often to movies that are inappropriate for their kid. The worst I ever saw was 2 white trash morons take a kid that looked 3 or 4 to see Natural Born Killers. Message to parents: having kids means you don't get to do the things you used to. If you can't get a babysitter, STAY HOME. Teenagers ruin movies as well. Suburban parents drop their kids off at movie theaters and malls as if they were some sort of babysitting service. Judging from their kids' behavior, I wouldn't want them in the house either, but I didn't choose to have them. Again, you had kids now deal with the consequences.
These are mild problems by comparison. Violence is not uncommon these days with fist fights, knifings and actual shootings taking place at the movies.
Like the music biz, the big theater chains have been very, very slow to adapt. They have dug in their heels and avoided making the theater going experience superior to waiting 3 months and watching the movie at home. They have been slow to change over to digital and 3D projection and also been slow to utilize formats like IMAX, which simply can't be replicated in a home theater. Of course while improving the presentation of the film costs money, controlling audience behavior is free of charge.
Today Variety reports that the Village Road Show company will start to build some lavish, premium theaters in the US. They will offer valet parking, restaurants and waiter service to your seat in the theater. Theses theaters will also be equipped with state of the art digital projection and sound. And the tickets will cost $35.
What????
$35? To see a movie I can buy on DVD in 3 months for half that? What these guys are failing to see is it doesn't matter if the projection is in pristine digital or if the waiter serves you great sushi. None of it matters if the asshole behind you won't shut up or stop kicking your seat.
In LA we have a theater called the Arclight. It's in Hollywood on Sunset and Vine. It costs $14 to see a movie there, $12 for matinees. It is essentially the same concept, minus the waiters. And wouldn't having waiters coming in and out of a movie be a huge distraction anyway?
The Arclight totally gets it right and I go out of my way to see movies there. They rock.
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