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Movie theaters will look vastly different if they survive COVID-19:
thanks to mass closings and skyrocketing debt for theater franchises during COVID-19, the future of the businesses that offered me so much comfort as a teen is in peril. In uncertain times, one thing seems increasingly clear: The theater industry must change to survive. Here's how movie theaters might look in the future.
[...] Sure, companies like AMC hated the super cheap subscription-based app Moviepass, but the subscription model is an increasingly popular and time-tested method of ensuring revenue -- some theaters in the UK have been using such services for more than a decade.
[...] Drive-in theaters, which thrived in the '50s and early '60s, are already finding a second (or third) life amid the pandemic, thanks to the built-in social distancing and -- for the reason many of them still survived before COVID-19 -- nostalgia.
[...] How exactly this will look remains to be seen, but tech and streaming giants like Apple, Amazon and Netflix have either considered buying theaters or already committed to doing so. While wholesale corporate takeovers are probably a long shot, Silicon Valley has the capital to buy out floundering theater franchises and incorporate them into their existing integrative business models -- and doing so could dramatically reorient the movie theater landscape.
Or, more of them could serve food and beer like Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday June 19 2020, @02:15PM (4 children)
Same here. In the 1980s, I watched lots of movies. No TV.
In the 1990s watched a few movies. Good stuff on cable TV. (Yes, there was some good stuff in the 1990s)
In the 2000s watched more DVDs and uses a TiVo extensively because cable TV had become "reality TV" reruns and marathons of reruns.
In the 2010s I cut the cord and use only subscription streaming. I lean heavily toward ad free content.
I sometimes find a movie every few years that I think is worth seeing in a theater. But wow are theaters ghost towns (and I mean even several years before covid-19).
Every performance optimization is a grate wait lifted from my shoulders.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday June 19 2020, @02:27PM (3 children)
Very similar experience. I got rid of my TV in the early 2000:s. Then switched to just, lets call it, online content. Mostly I'll wait for a show or something to go for a season and then watch it when it comes out in a box and similar. With the subscription services this has somewhat started to be the new norm as they release an entire season on the same day and then you can binge or watch it in whatever fashion you prefer. I like that a lot more then the old "tune in on wednesday at 2015 for the next four months!".
By not having a TV anymore I guess I still have some kind of appreciation for the cinema screen and soundsystem as I just have none of it at home and no interesting in having one either. Several large monitors are quite enough for me. So it's still special in some way, there just isn't very much to see anymore as far as I'm concerned -- mainly due I guess to me no longer being their target audience as grumpy middle aged men just isn't a big demographic for producers these days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 19 2020, @05:20PM (2 children)
Breaking News!
Man on the Internet announces he has no TV!
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Friday June 19 2020, @06:57PM
Unlike FoxNews, over at CNN they don't just make up stuff and call it "News".
CNN calls it BREAKING NEWS.
Every performance optimization is a grate wait lifted from my shoulders.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by toddestan on Saturday June 20 2020, @04:41AM
Is it really unusual anymore? And for those that have a TV, how many people actually use it as a TV?
I don't watch TV, but I guess I can't claim I don't have a TV, though I don't have a modern HDTV.