Boxoffice Pro - Winter 2020

showed was the advantages it gave to
Sony, which was now the sole company
controlling its films’ content, distribution
channels, and the hardware with which
people could watch movies at home (VCR,
laser disks, etc.).
Exhibition did not escape the M&A
trend, despite the Paramount Decrees.
Sony held the historic chain Loews, which
was briefly renamed Sony Cinemas before
switching back to its original name. Warner
Communications and Gulf & Western
formed Cineamerica Theaters, a corporate
entity that took over Gulf & Western’s
Mann Theaters, Festival Enterprises, and
Trans-Lux circuits. Finally, MCA, the
parent company of Universal, purchased a
49 percent stake in Cineplex Odeon in 1986.
While most acquisitions were not the
subject of commentary by the editorial
team, Boxoffice Pro’s new editor, Harley
W. Lond (who took over in 1984 and
implemented a significant overhaul that
put more editorial emphasis on “vital
analysis and interpretation” rather than
straight news), deplored the trend. In
an August 1989 editorial, he wrote, “The
conglomeration fever in our industry
has now moved from the acquisition of
exhibition outlets to the acquisition of
production outlets, and this does not augur
well for us. Just recently, George Lucas
bemoaned the rash corporate takeover
by stating that such actions ‘damage the
creative energies of the entertainment
industry’ by creating companies with
enormous debts, thus tying up resources
that should be made available instead for
risk-taking on new films, filmmakers, and
new ideas.”
The survival of smaller and
independent theaters who struggled to
stay afloat was at stake. Boxoffice Pro
dedicated a lot of space to independent
distribution and exhibitors, publishing
regular strategy columns and profiles of
distributors and cinemas. A few indies
managed to thrive, most notably New
Line Cinema with the hit A Nightmare
on Elm Street and Miramax with Sex, Lies,
and Videotape, as well as exhibitors like
Carmike Cinemas, Pacific Theaters, and
the Laemmle chain. But as Dan Harkins,
president of Arizona’s Harkins Theaters,
put it in December 1987, independents
were still “facing extinction” because
of conglomerate buy ups. Independent
exhibitors were at the forefront of the
fight against integration, often pushing
for resolutions through NATO. In
fact, Boxoffice Pro reported that in
August 1987, Dan Harkins, as well as
other exhibitors from Texas and Indiana,
appeared in front of New York’s District
Court to prevent Tri-Star from having
the right to book its films into its Loews
cinemas. Despite their efforts, the court
granted Tri-Star its request.
Home Entertainment, VCR Wars,
and MTV
Vertical concentration was not the only
challenge facing the exhibition industry
in the 1980s. Editor Alexander Auerbach
had summed up the threat of home
entertainment in a March 1981 editorial.
“Exhibition and the studios, which once
feared the advent of television, now
ponder on the impact of cable TV,
pay-TV, the videodisc, and videotape,
direct broadcast from satellite to home
and other technological advances. All
of this new gadgetry can be regarded as
either an opportunity or a threat, but
in either case, it cannot be ignored,” he
argued. As had happened since the advent
of TV in the ’50s, theaters were competing
for the scarce time, attention, and cash
of a moviegoing audience that now had
a seemingly never-ending bounty of
home alternatives.
One significant threat in home
entertainment was the rapid quality
improvements in TV screens and surround
systems at home. Echoing the race to
large formats in the ’50s, as readers of
this column might remember, Tony
Francis, president of Theater Products
International and regular Boxoffice Pro
contributor, lamented in May 1981 that
“the picture only offers size.” He feared
that although the quality of TV pictures
was inferior to film, it would soon surpass
Winter 2020
31