Can Subscription Model Save Small-Town Movie Theaters? | Hacker News Reader

Can Subscription Model Save Small-Town Movie Theaters?

latimes.com

31 pointsklenwell14 comments

The theater in my hometown[1] took a different approach. About 3 years after its original closing in 2000 due to money issues, it was reopened as a nonprofit volunteer-run theater. Since then it has been successful enough to have been able to refurnish the seating and other parts of the theater, upgrade to a digital projector, and provide sponsorships and scholarships to the community.

[1] - http://www.lakecitycapri.org/

This is an inspiring story

And the missing answer to the obvious question: yes, they succeeded in getting 3000 people to sign up by Dec 31st.

https://savethemet.com/?ref=metcinema.com

So they say they need 3000 people to commit to $20 a month to work. That's $60,000 a month or $720,000/yr it costs to run the theatre. It seems they include the per seat royalties on the screenings by charging you extra if you see each new movie more than once, and by being able to control how many new releases they have each month.

The member price for extra viewings and guests is $7 a show, which is the normal price for small town theaters. The price for non-members is $16, which is exceptionally high and will likely dissuade almost all casual visitors. It seems to be a decoy price whose intent is not to sell at that point but to mask that $7 for member tickets is not a bargain, but a normal ticket price.

That figure is not what it costs to run the theater - that cost is royalties to the studios.

Theaters make money on popcorn and soda, not tickets.

I see merit in this model. I also see a problem: I think people want to be sure that they can get into the showing they want.

Under the classic box office model once you have your timed ticket purchased you're guaranteed a seat in the theater. Under this subscription model if there are 200 seats in the theater but 250 subscribers show up for the 5:30 showing then you're going to get some frustrated customers.

How the heck early would I as a subscriber need to arrive for a big box office premier? For art-house/indie theaters I think this model might skirt that problem, though.

They could do online time reservation, similar to online seat selection for air travel. If you don't remember to login and claim a time when the schedule for a given movie is released then you are forced to pick a less than desired time. It doesn't have to be any different than buying a ticket on Fandango without showing up to the box office.

Seems like you could flip it in to a kind of feature. What if it was like season tickets and you were guaranteed a seat at one of the first n showings? Maybe I'm too far out of my 20s but its not that big a deal for me to be there at midnight to see the opening, if you could make sure my whole family got seated comfortably at 4pm on a Saturday or Sunday though, I might pay even more and just schedule that time every month as move time There are theater that do family night were people can bring infants and such, treat it like that and in the right sized community you could almost have private screenings; that is a premium service.

The other logical thing, let subscribers vote on up coming movies to bring, if you pick the movie maybe you could get tickets to see it sooner.

In France (but probably in many other countries), UGC and others chains have an unlimited subscription plan (at around 20€ per month).

According to Wikipedia [1] it has 200.000 subscribers and generates 25% of the revenue.

[1] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale_cin%C3...

My local old fashioned cinema closed about a year ago ending an unbroken single family ownership dating back to the first world war. It had been dying on its feet for a long time. Last film i watched there i almost froze to death. The town's population is only about 7000 and there are modern cinemas about a half hour drive away. This story suggests that the local population would need to pledge a half million euro a year to re-open it and that's not going to happen

There's a theater one town over, population about half of that (edit: 1/3- it was 960 as of 2011). They've been doing pretty well, better than ten years ago even! Their prices are the same as every other theater (the next one being 45 minutes away), but now they have a gallery and cafe upstairs. Before any previews start, they play a slideshow of ads for local businesses. A subscription sounds nice, but I think the only way it could really work is if people actually want to be there, in which case all those other improvements become twice as helpful.

That's great, being able to sit, chat and have a drink (maybe even eat!) beforehand turns a trip to the pictures into a perfect midweek night out.

Exactly! I didn't even mention that Monday/Wednesday (can't remember which) is matinee price all night. It's really great for meeting up with friends or multiple families going to see big releases (like the Hobbit) together. And of course lastly there's the "screening studio", which is just one of the three screens that sometimes shows local/regional productions or hosts forums.

And yet another update: I'm thee right now, waiting for the Hobbit. Apparently they do 3d now, with all new projectors. They're doing even better than I thought...

I think there could be something to models like this. I saw a startup trying something like this recently (I think it was called MoviePass?).

My wife and I see around 2 movies a month on average, and we probably saw 3-4 a month before we had our 2 year old. If there was a subscription plan that let you see new releases and actually saved you money, we'd most likely do it.

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