On Screen:
DWORKIN, MARTIN S.
On SCREEN Pay-as-you-see Television Worries Movie Exhibitors By Martin S. Dworkin FIFTEEN OR TWENTY years from now, we may be saying that the marriage of the movies and television took place...
...The third system, "Telemeter," in which Paramount Pictures has a majority interest, uses a coin box attached to the set...
...Coming at a time when the Government is also pressing an anti-trust suit against the movie producers for withholding their films from distribution in 16mm channels —which includes television reproduction—the Commission's rather cautious action has struck the exhibitor interests with the gentle impact of a bomb...
...a practical system will surely evolve...
...Many unpleasant characteristics of television as we know it—including the nature of sponsorship and sponsor domination of material—might have been modified had there been less haste in getting TV's ball rolling...
...At this point, however, it is the principle which is the primary issue...
...The FCC is proceeding slowly...
...Floor-to-ceiling TV" may be as common as wall-to-wall carpeting, and something like "total television" may become a reality in rooms wherein only the floor, perhaps, may not be turned electronically alive...
...And even the growing number of drive-in theaters did not have to be attributed only to the rush to get away from TV: For one thing, the trend of population movement toward suburban colonies built around "shopping centers" made drive-ins practicable and profitable...
...All three systems have had some tests, but under limited conditions which revealed many problems...
...Now exhibitors are arguing against toll-television on the grounds that the air is free, that television should be as free to viewers as radio is to listeners, and so on...
...Even the widest of the wide-screen systems lesser than Cinerama may have yielded before the enlarging television screens in the home—by then all using flat tubes hung like pictures...
...Not only the principle of pay-as-you-see, but the merits of various proposed systems will be argued...
...In the modern Cave, where choice is ever more decisively limited to images, and truth is but another shadow, electronically actuated, the most important question is: Who runs the projector...
...A few years ago, before Cinerama, 3-D, Cinemascope, Vistavision, Stereophonic Sound and other barrages in the movies' counter-offensive against television, it seemed that nothing could save the theaters except air conditioning in the summer —until people bought conditioners for their homes in order to be comfortable while watching TV...
...On SCREEN Pay-as-you-see Television Worries Movie Exhibitors By Martin S. Dworkin FIFTEEN OR TWENTY years from now, we may be saying that the marriage of the movies and television took place easily and logically, according to inherent, quidditive kinship of the two media...
...The exhibitors—aided by some television groups with a stake in advertising revenue—have tried to prevent any consideration of pay-as-you-seo systems on the part of the public or the public agencies concerned...
...Ever deeper in the Platonic Cave, we will be able to surround ourselves with images at the touch of a button, choosing from among fabulously variegated myriads of programs...
...programs would be selected and paid for in the manner of a juke box...
...The drive-in made possible a convenient synthesis of the social functions of the automobile and the movie theater...
...These are mild fancies, in the light of the potentialities of techniques already available...
...And surely there is sufficient reason for caution in what we can envision of this forthcoming revolution in the mass media...
...There still may be movie theaters, but these may be devoted to spectacular exhibitions on the order of more stupendous Cineramas...
...Many movie people, especially exhibitors, hoped that the upsurge in business after 1952 meant more than a reprieve, that some kind of modus vivendi was working itself out between the theaters and television...
...But they are nightmares to many in the movie industry, who are watching the incipience of pay-as-you-see television with a dread that is almost hysterical...
...Some of the people who came to the theaters may have been trying to escape television programming or commercials...
...What they saw was a little better, and a lot more lavish, than what they could watch at home free of charge...
...There are three in the field, two of which, Zenith "Phonevision" and Skialron "Subscriber-Vision," make use of coded or "scrambled" signals, which are cleared at the television receiver by inserting decoder cards purchased in advance...
...Let the public use these precious moments before upheaval for full consideration of alternatives, dangers and safeguards...
...For another, there are powerful social reasons for younger people to leave homes and television for an evening at the movies...
...But now the matter stands to be fully aired, as the Federal Communications Commission has invited all "interested parties" to submit briefs...
...But television receivers continued to be sold in huge quantities...
...There was even a rise in theater receipts last year...
...But much of the increase represented the repealed Federal tax on tickets, which was simply absorbed into admission prices, although exhibitors had previously implied that the saving would be passed on to the public...
Vol. 38 • March 1955 • No. 11
