In a Wall Street Journal commentary, author Bob Greene noted that U.S. movie theaters faced a similar crisis in 1949, when television screens began replacing silver screens. Theater chains saw steep drops, like 33 percent in San Francisco and 45 percent in Philadelphia.
“The theater owners were nervous,” Greene wrote. That November, managers at New York’s Roxy Theatre responded to the crisis with an ad for a live stage show. “For the price of a regular movie ticket,” Greene explained, “the Roxy’s patrons could also watch a singer, a puppet show and a comedian, live.” Then, as now with streaming, he observed, “the challenge was to get movie fans out of their homes and into a theater.”
Greene added that only a few cities have a ready supply of big-name entertainers — but “doing nothing isn’t an option.”
Leave A Comment