Back in the late 1960s, the movie theater industry launched a PR blitz called “Save Free TV”! Urging people to pressure Congress to make a law against paying for Cable TV. The NAB has a similar scare campaign at the moment that if radio has to start paying performers for playing their music (like SiriusXM and Pandora do), that will be the death knell for “free” radio and we’ll all be held hostage by some foreign country.
The theater owners figured that if people could watch movies at home, their business was dead. People would stop going out to see a movie. The particular theater I was working at (selling newspapers) had been built in the vaudeville days. It had a stage and a pipe organ. What it didn’t have was parking. You either had to take public transit, walk, or try to find parking on a nearby street.
As Cable TV arrived, the movie theater business had to change. Theaters moved to shopping centers with free parking. Instead of having one huge theater, multiplexes played many movies at the same time. Initially, the movie studios let the theaters have exclusive access to their first run movies – as they started seeing revenue from HBO and VCR rentals, the exclusive time began to shrink. As things have evolved, HBO went into the production business, displacing TV and movie production companies. Things change.
But Movie Theaters didn’t die. They have changed to give you reasons to still go there. The movie theater I worked at was torn down in the last year and is now a CVS.
Tell the NAB that I do not fear being held hostage by some foreign country, I fear being held hostage by my own country. Maybe some should find us a good rendition of “Nowhere to Run”.
Ask and ye shall find:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17yfqxoSTFM
Awesome video ! Poor guys in the paint booth, not even wearing a respirator or filter !
Looked Like Eddie Murphy couldn’t take his eyes off them girls, when they were riding down the assembly. Crazy insurance company wouldn’t let them anywhere near an assembly line today !
That looked like a 289 he was dropping in the Mustang. No airbags or blackbox, pure car with whitewall tires. If I had that car in high school, well, hell yeah!
Great video find Briand
parrott
No one uses respirators or filters today, Parrott. You are so disco era lol Check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXntSUtoEFc
Where else can you go for a large cup of popcorn for $10?
And get arrested for being a glasshole
Hope this helps SRG readers…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57619788-71/the-definitive-guide-to-not-being-a-glasshole/
I think I’ll buy one of those “I’m a glasshole” T-shirts and see what happens.
At least at the moment, nobody has applied for a trademark for glasshole. I smell a huge opportunity here.
How about this one – the movie studios bought up the news channels so that the movies become the news.
If free radio gave people a listen, maybe they still would. All the truly creative people who used to be on radio and lost their gigs have podcasts now. That’s ultimately a much bigger threat to the hacks that run radio companies…people listening to whatever they want to, whenever they want to.
Yes. Load up your phone at home and then listen on the drive to work. Can also stream on the road as well.
Did Beck move back to NYC ? He mentioned this morning he was in NY, FEB. 24th,
and all last week.
parrott
Shhhh! NYC will consider him a part time resident and tax 1/52 of his annual earnings.
Premiere is located in California, it’s owned by clear channel located in Texas, and Beck does his show in Texas (mostly). His Blaze stream has customers in every state and has advertisements that generate income. Which states get a cut in which parts get very murky.
No. He is only there for a few weeks.