- According to Online Testing Exchange (OTX), men under 13 to 25 watched 24% fewer movies this summer than in the summer of 2003. "Instead, they said they were surfing, instant-messaging with friends and playing video games on consoles," says the New York Times.
To be released next week, the study "quantifies what many in Hollywood have theorized this year, as box office revenues have dropped 7 to 10 percent, namely that the increased competition for leisure time from the Internet and interactive gaming has eroded the movie audience," says the NYT, going on:
"In the OTX study, young men also complained loudest among respondents about the movies themselves. Only 35 percent reported that there was an 'excellent selection' of movie choices, down from 60 percent two years ago. Women and other age groups also reported a decline, though not as precipitous. In the study's other major finding, a majority of respondents - 68 percent - said they had attended fewer movies because it had become too expensive. That reason was cited far more than other factors, like the decline in quality or a preference for waiting for the DVD."
Attendance numbers are also declining because cinema goers don't want to waste their money on "films with "lame plots whose advertising campaigns seemed to be better thought out than their story lines," said National Association of Theater Owners president John Fithian recently.
In this report, the NYT has him saying , "the basic assumption that people are going to the movies less often is not true" and, "For the time being, you have a product that is in many ways geared to a particular audience that is the most distracted by the new digital environment."
Hollywood might need to recultivate the practice of making movies for older audiences, the NYT quotes Vincent Bruzzese, the study's author and senior OTX vp as saying, adding, "For the time being, you have a product that is in many ways geared to a particular audience that is the most distracted by the new digital environment."
See:- New York Times - Study Finds Young Men Attending Fewer Films, October 8, 2005, issue lame plots - It's the movies, stupid, October 2, 2005
