WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MOVIE THEATRE ?

The notice on the door says The Regal UA Commerce Township has closed permanently.

The theatre opened in 1998. Twenty-seven years ago. It actually seemed longer to me. It was a very nice venue in a good location. Fourteen screens and six box offices. For a number of years there were long lines on the weekend at those box offices. On a Saturday I would actually go and buy tickets in the early afternoon to avoid the lines in the evening or the picture being sold out.

Movies theatres have been popular for a long time. When most homes started getting television sets in the 1950's people were saying it would hurt the movie business. It did not. Most T.V.s had small screens. In the beginning T.V. shows were in black and white only. Three networks and some local broadcasting.

People still enjoyed going to a movie theatre. Young kids to the Saturday matinee with friends. Watch two movies, a cartoon or two and a preview of coming attractions. Buy popcorn and candy. Teenagers liked Friday or Saturday night with friends or maybe a date. It was a place that parents could go for an evening. Get a baby-sitter and have an evening out.

Every year people looked forward to the Academy award show on television. Everyone would be excited about who and which pictures would win the Oscars. See all the movie stars. The show would go on for about three hours. It was like the super bowl for motion pictures. The ratings reported forty to fifty million people would watch the award show often hosted by Bob Hope or Johnny Carson among other well-known entertainers. It was an evening of glamor and excitement.

Things went along this way through the 1990's. When we entered the new century things began to change. Movie attendance began to drop a little as did ratings for the Oscar show.

Televisions were changing. The era of flat panel televisions had arrived. They were very expensive in the beginning, but prices soon dropped. The screens were much larger and clearer. In addition, T.V. programming was changing. Some people started putting media rooms in their homes, even small movie theatres. Cable T.V. offered many

channels. Something called streaming arrived. Many different platforms arrived from H.B.O to Netflix to Amazon and Amazon Prime. You-Tube arrived along with all kinds of ways to watch movies and sports, news and weather. The list goes on and on twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.

The new century moved on. Movie attendance continued to slip and before long the audience had dropped to about twenty million people were watching the once very popular Oscar show.

When we reached the year 2020 something else happened The Covid Virus arrived. People had to stay home. Theaters along with other business's had too temporarily close.

When the movie theaters re-opened a lot of people did not rush back. Maybe they did not like sitting in large theaters with a lot of people anymore? But they go to plays, concerts, and ball games. The product being put out by movie producers had been slipping for a number of years. Remakes of old movies, poor scripts, high prices, maybe bad marketing. The reason they have not returned to the movie theatre is probably because there has not been much for the movie fan to go back to see

There are well over one thousand fewer screens in America since 2020. Several movie theaters have closed in suburban Detroit this year. Does the motion picture industry have any plans to improve the situation? I do not know, or will this be an industry that goes the way of the dinosaur.

WRITTEN BY

RON TURETT

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