Why Doesn't the Theater Industry Do Something?

Here's a brief diagnosis of what's wrong with the theater industry. I was going to suggest that they do more dinner theaters and IMAX screens, and I still think that's the answer. Make a movie ticket significantly more expensive and increase your service level. That will make movie goers feel special and they'll respect the entire experience more. One thing is for certain, something has to change if this industry doesn't want to join the drive-in...

After much ado, I recently purchased my first HDTV. I've had a surround sound system for quite a while. I also have a Netflix membership and a very comfortable couch. This leads me to the question:

Why should I ever go to the theater again?

I'll further qualify this by stating that I am nearly 30, so I'm mature enough to not bite on advertising hype. I've learned the people and conversations that I need to ignore so that the plot is not spoiled for me. There are other factors to help solidify the decision that I really don't want to go to the theater anymore, but I won't bore you with them.

Back to the question, I think that people need a compelling reason to go to theaters. I'm going to try to find ways that the industry could answer this question, but in reality the industry should be attempting to answer it themselves. Without an answer, I believe that somewhere around three of every four theater goers who purchases an HDTV will abandon the theaters and never look back.

The Simple Answer

The simple answer, and the one that theater owners have stuck to, is that they must keep DVD release dates pushed back as far as possible. They must cling to the old system where movies come out in theaters and then are released on consumer media some arbitrary time span later. This gives the theaters a temporary monopoly that adds value to their ticket sales.

This is the same flawed logic that is hurting the entertainment system everywhere. They are simply so afraid of change that they will spend every dime they can to make things stay the same, instead of adapting. They're ignoring what their consumers want. The consumer wants to either stay at home or have a better experience at the theater. They don't want to go to the theater to spend $50 for sticky seats and obnoxious company. (I can hardly remember the last time a movie at the theater wasn't marred by some selfishly loud commenter or teen who can't hang up their cell phone.) People will not continue to honor the monopoly of the theaters if the entire experience is terrible, the rest of the industry will not continue to ignore this either.

If the industry and the consumers abandon the theaters, who is left? No one. The theaters will fold at that point. America will then be left with an immense collection of empty big box multiplexes and a mere memory of when it was worthwhile to go out and see a movie.

Basically, while the limited monopoly answer is still part of the equation, it's not a good answer. Theaters can not afford to rely on this. The supplier is threatening to take it away and the consumer is demanding it go.

It's an indictment against the theater experience. The only way to fix this is to fix the experience. The answer lies in asking more questions. Questions like, "How can the experience be fixed?"

The Never Ending Netflix Queue

Here's a post I started writing a couple of months ago and left as a draft. I remains true, though Karenann no longer has her own queue so mine has grown to about 45 movies. I think I was going to try to analyze why the queue never really shrinks, but I'll just post the thought as is...

I've been a member of Netflix for several years. I've had my own queue since late 2005. There have been periods where I only have one movie out at a time, and others where I have two.

Originally, I only allocated one movie to myself. Then I watched as the other two sat on the entertainment center unwatched. So I gave myself another slot. I was watching movies far more frequently. I figured that I would process a bunch of movies that I wanted to watch and then give the slot back once I'd whittled my queue down to 10 or 15 movies.

My queue has never dipped below 25 movies.

It Is Not WWIII, Yet

I'm looking forward to debunking the World War III rumors that are currently being spread by spam. Just in case you see this and you get an email that you're tempted to open, don't do it. These spammers are using this as a way to spread malware so that they can recruit more computers to do their spamming. We haven't invaded Iran yet, and you probably still have a chance to vote against more war this fall.

5 Days

5 days is how long it's taken my package to get from Jersey City to... Jersey City. I don't know whether Amazon or the USPS is at fault but it is ridiculous either way.

Thank You For Working

I want to take a moment to express my appreciation to everyone who is working during this three day weekend. Even those who were able to take the 4th off, but have to work today or tomorrow, deserve some gratitude. Holidays are great, but the world continues to move. Thank you for facilitating that movement. Rest assured that there are people who don't take you for granted.

Netflix Redeemed

After a few weeks of customer complaints they decided to keep their profiles feature.

I'm still going to work to move my ratings outside of Netflix. I've begun rating movies on IMDB for this. Then I'll delete my profile and assimilate my information into my wife's, since she's no longer using the service anyway. I still wish they made the data portable, it would make everything so much easier.

Why, Netflix? Why?

I just talked to Danni from NetFlix customer service. She provided more psychological help than anything else. She can't help me, because they haven't enabled her to do so.

Netflix is deleting my profile in a few months, and there's nothing she or I can do about it.

The closest thing to a solution she offered was to go into my wife's account, look at my account through the friends feature, and manually add all of the movies from the queue and rate all of the movies again. There is no way to switch my account to the main one, make my account a new account, or copy the data automatically. It's really disappointing.

It seems that I'm somewhat alone in seeing the value of all of this. My wife mocks me for it. To me, this was a database of nearly every movie I've ever seen with at least some thought put into how I felt about that movie.

It won't seem right to mix that data with my wife's. Suddenly I'll have to think, did I watch that movie, or did she? Did I really give that 4 stars, or was it her?

More than that, I occasionally took part in the community, and had recently made an effort to write a few more movie reviews. I was toying with the movie reviewer rankings to see what I could do to raise mine. Now, why bother?

I'm pretty disappointed, NetFlix. I've often evangelized your service and I've rarely had an issue with your customer support. By your own metrics I was within the top 2% of reviewers even before I actively tried to manipulate the rankings. You're just tossing that in the trash in a couple of months.

You couldn't even write an account migration script? What a letdown.