Guess I need to step in and respond here in hopes of clearing up a few things.
1. Theater owners make little money from the sale of tickets, most of that goes to film producers and distributors. To keep a theater open they have to rely on concessions and other sources of income.
2. Two different forms of advertising were mentioned and they have little or nothing to do with each other. Lets say the movie is scheduled to start at 7 PM. The pre-show entertainment, those trivia programs with ads in between, run from the time the last movie ended until the 7 PM start time. The advertising pays for the trivia questions and the equipment, bulbs and labor to run it. The theater does make some money, but for most circuits (theater chains) the number of advertisers is limited so that the program remains entertaining. If the program were all advertising, I too would complain.
The ads that many people object to are called rolling stock. They look like TV commercials, but are actually small rolls of film spliced in between the trailers. They are very valuable to the advertisers because no one can change the channel and because the demographics of moviegoers is so outstanding. In the scenario above these would start at 7 PM and run for 10 to 20 minutes. This gets people upset because this is time they are paying for. Three trailers and 2 or 3 ads doesnt seem to rile too many people, but when it extends to 20 minutes, people are justifiably upset. Without getting nasty, ask to speak with a manager on your way out and let them know that you object to sitting through that many ads.
3. Second run, or bargain theaters are most often independents who are not offered the lucrative contracts to run rolling stock ads. They probably would if they could since most of them are low budget/low profit operations. Many are run by people who love movies and the movie business.
4. In England, across Europe and in Australia twenty to 30 minutes of advertising is standard and the industry in United States hopes and believes that the moviegoing audience will come to accept the same.
5. As for advertising in movie itself, theres plenty of it already. Food products, computers, automobiles, famous label clothing and all types of products and services that get mentioned and seen are most often paid placements, in effect, paid advertisements. You dont have to look too closely to see many of these ads now and in the future they will be more and they will be even more prominent. Television shows are doing the very same thing in response to channel surfing and Tivo zapping the commercials.
My disclaimer: Im a partner in a small company that places the trivia/advertising programs on about 500 screens, mostly in the Midwest. We hear almost zero complaints since the alternative is a dark screen prior to the start of the show. It is our company policy to limit the number of advertisers and we are unique in that we present more trivia than any of our competitors.
Feel free to PM or email me with your thoughts. I welcome the discussion.
At least it let me get the kids settled in their seats while I went for popcorn
