Hey guys, just a quick little follow up to that post I did a couple of days ago about how commercials in movie theaters are essentially the same as movie piracy in the sense that both are forms of taking an asset (my time or the movie itself) without giving anything in compensation for that asset.
Some people rushed to raise the obvious argument that commercials in movie theaters help reduce movie ticket prices… and without those commercials the prices of our movie tickets would skyrocket. I never bought that argument. If you look at the history of when commercials started to get played in theaters and the course of movie ticket price increases, you quickly notice that the advent of commercials in theaters didn’t stop the rate of ticket price increases one little bit.
But is history isn’t enough to persuade you that those commercials in movie theater don’t actually do anything to bring down the cost of that ridiculously priced ticket… then how about the math?
1) The MPAA put out a report that said in North America alone movie theaters sold 1.45 BILLION movie tickets
2) The Cinema Advertising Council reports that in 2006 movie theaters generated a record $456 million in ad revenue for the commercials before movies.
3) That works out to a hefty… are you ready for this…. $0.31 per ticket. And who seriously believes theaters are reducing our ticket prices $0.31? Anyone? Anyone? Busller? Bueller?
I’m sorry, but the movie industry is not reducing their ticket prices in lieu of the commercials they force feed on us. They charge as much as they please… and then just take the advertising money on top of it at MY TIME’S expense without giving me anything in return.
