Movie Goers Face Extinction

Is advancing multimedia entertainment technology set to ruin the movie theater industry, do movie goers face extinction? Or, is it just this generation’s equivalent of the disruptive technologies that were first television and then the VCR, which led to renewed interest in going to the movies?

Apparently, home movie entertainment sales are on the increase. If you haven’t got one yourself, you’re sure to know someone with one of those outsized flat screen high-resolution TVs. And, if not an HD-TV, then there’ll be plenty of people around you carrying a mobile electronic device of some sort that can display video files.

Your neighbors have probably got portable DVD players on display for the annoying children in the back seats of their cars. Almost every pocket or purse within a fifty-pace radius will be harboring an mp4 player or a smart video phone, you can even watch DVDs on your iPhone if you really must.

Aside from the enormous tide of bit torrents and other file sharing systems, inexpensive downloadable broadband-based movies - free movies and paid-for - are becoming a popular route to getting your video fix and this coupled with the new technology could spell the end of the movie theater, again.

As Alan Smith of the Department of Management and Marketing, at Robert Morris University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, explains in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Business Innovation and Research (2008, 2, pp 223-240) explains:

“Companies like Netflix are offering a large selection of movies at a low price, while the ability to strip DVDs to blank CDs or blank DVDs means the movie theaters are being forced to lower ticket prices, file for bankruptcy and/or merge with other theaters to remain competitive.”

But, haven’t we been here before? Step back a few decades to the 1950s and you’ll hear about the demise of the movie industry when TV reached the masses. Then, in the 1970s when home video recorders became popular, the doomsayers pronounced the collapse of the industry. However, each time, the movie industry reinvented itself, cross-marketed to a new generation of movie goers, and became even bigger, adding over-priced food and drink concessions into the bargain and raking in the profits. Could this current wave of e-movies be different?

After all, are there really that many people who have an active social life and a wide circle of friends that revolves around nothing more than watching pixelated Youtube clips on a 2-inch screen or even a 58-inch high-def multimedia system with uber-surround?

Surely not! Doesn’t everyone prefer the inconvenience of shipping out to a movie theater, paying exorbitant ticket prices (even if they have been dropped), feeling obliged to buy expensive popcorn and cola (as if you couldn’t survive 180 minutes without food or drink), and having to endure everyone else’s selfless commentaries, shufflings, snufflings, and scufflings, and their various bodily noises…?

Smith points out that there is an increasing correlation between these electronic initiatives in the various types of movie media and technology used and the decrease in the traditional movie theater industry. In general, he says:

People increasingly prefer the convenience of watching movies in the comfort of their own homes with state of the art technology (surround sound systems, HDTV, Plasma TV, TiVo, DVD Recorders/Burners

He reiterates that there have been many threats to the movie theater industry, but as great technology becomes cheaper and easier to use, this time. “The movie-theatre industry has survived many threats related to its decline, and the increase in technology is the next obstacle it must overcome. Movie directors and theatres will need to combat their efforts to use technology to their advantage if they want to remain competitive,” says Smith.

It may spell the end of traditional movie going as a preferred entertainment vehicle.