Here's a letter I wrote to Mark Cuban I thought it was a fun read!

WAKE UP MARK!

I don't mean that in a bad way, but come on most people here are complaining about the same thing over and over. It's not the theatre's that have the problem it's the industry as a whole.

Here's the issue, the Movie industry is still living with the same economic model it was living with 20 years ago. $80 million budgets another $20 million in marketing and the "HOPE" that they make it all back or most of it in the 1st weekend. Modern world to the movie industry, that doesn't work anymore. We the consumer have far more choices now, we have theatres in every room in the house, and most of us have 100's of channels of original content. According to the Motion Picture Association something like 194 Movies were released last year. The average budget of said movies was $48 million. Oprah, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Heck countless DIY and HGTV programs will do 194 productions in a season. All this is done with Millions watching, what are the millions paying to watch? Nothing, virtually nothing. Sure some may pay cable companies or satellite companies, but in reality what I pay the cable company monthly my wife and I could only go to the movies 2-3 times tops. The sad thing is I rarely even watch movies on the 100's of channels that I have, I even have some 20 "movie" channels which all of 2 (2!!!!!!!!) are available in HD. I still rarely will watch what's on there, the reason is a lack of original content. I'm more likely to watch HBO for their shows than I am for the movies, most of which I've already seen on DVD. Why? Simple, I know that they'll play that same movie 80 times in the next 3 months and my DVR will catch it for me at 2am if I really want to watch it again. I rarely do that though because I rent from Blockbuster.com for all of $17 a month and get to watch 15-25 DVD quality relevant movies or TV shows a month.

So how is it that I the consumer would rather watch the latest episode of Lost than the movie that's already been on the market for the past 6 months? Simple, for one it's free, another, the quality of the production rivals that of the movie, and finally its original programming. How is it that the broadcast industry, which 20 years ago was much like the movie industry, is able to provide me with far more quality content than the movie industry? 20 years ago when I watched television I had some 8 channels to watch, with some original programming, we got cable and then we had all of 30 channels to watch with more original programming. We’d still get bored with it, the way it was presented to us, the quality was sub-par, and we couldn’t get it when we wanted it. So when we wanted the best entertainment possible we went to the movies! The Movies were in surround sound not just stereo, they were on 40’ screens, the quality of the films blew anything else we’d see on TV out of the water! At home we all had 25” CRT sets with at best stereo sound and at best we could watch the movie on the overwhelming quality of VHS. Now I have hundreds of channels to watch, all of my local broadcast (FREE) affiliates offer really good programming absolutely free in stunning High Definition with 5.1 surround sound. We’re talking 720p digital broadcasts that run DVD’s out of the water. Not only do they offer me this for free, but they offer me hundreds of these near masterpieces for free, they only ask that I watch the commercials, which I don’t even have to do that because of the wonders of science that provided us with the “DVR”. So with all those choices you want me and my wife to hunk down $20-30 after concessions to go see a feature film. Sorry it’s not going to happen, you want to make money making movies you need to do what the Television industry did in the last 20 years. They changed the way they did business in order to catch up with the technology. They quit paying actors ridiculous sums to make shows, through digital means they took production costs and reduced them on a massive scale, they created more programming based on reality to both heighten interest and reduce overall costs and in the end to create more content that technology now allowed them to broadcast. Yet here is the movie industry, still paying people like Tom Cruise $20million to do a film, Steven Speilberg $15 million, still producing some 200 movies per year at ridiculous costs. The Motion Picture Association hasn’t caught up with Television, they are far behind, and soon with Television producing more and sometimes better content than that of the movies they may not even be relevant to the discussion anymore. If you want to make money making original films than you need to change the antiquated business model, the competition is far too fierce and is eating you alive. Here is a quick list of 5 things I’d change immediately regarding the Industry and the Theatre.

1. Reduce the price of admission drastically, this can be done by reducing the amount of costs involved with making and distributing films, we don’t need people selling us tickets at a booth that can be automated thanks. (online, or kiosks at the theater)
2. Make it easier for the typical American Family to see the movie, how about an area for small children to be watched while mom and dad go see the movie. I’d gladly pay $10 so that my child could be watched during the movie.
3. Change the way concessions are handled, popcorn and drinks could easily be sold via a machine, offer some quality food at the non-self serve areas and maybe areas in the theatre where a dinner could be eaten, maybe a small bar in front of some rows so that drinks and food could placed. If I’m going to pay an outrageous amount for food I’d rather pay $7-8 on a quality burger or sandwich than $4 on a mediocre hot dog.
4. As many have already stated give the consumer more choice, offer the movie at a Kiosk at the theater on DVD, or via mail on the internet. Make the DVD one track fully uncompressed, no features no nothing, make the previews part of said track. One 10 gig track is not an easy feat to compress and viably pirate, especially if it’s already at 720p in Mpeg4 format. Besides why pirate it if you can buy it online or head to a kiosk and get your own copy for $9.99. Cost of selling it that way? Not much, that $9.99 equal damn near pure profit.
5. Change the business model of the theater itself, where as you may drastically reduce the cost of seeing one movie, offer the consumer more choice in the theater as a whole. Offer season passes where people can buy an allotment of movies, we’ll say 10 because it’s easy and that pass last for 6 months and cost around $45. You can sell that by advertising movies that will be coming out in the next 6 months to hit your demography. You can offer discounts on concessions with said pass, and you can finally give control to parents on what their kids are seeing. If the parents don’t want their kids to see anything worse than PG-13 their season pass is restricted as such. The technology is here, get with the broadcast industry and use it.

There’s a few other things you could change right now that would help. Bring back Ushers, and make them actually shut people up, or at least offer everyone a headphone jack in the seats. If I’m going to pay $8 to watch a movie in your theater vs my own than give me an incentive and at least get rid of the previews and advertisements. Oh and if you want me to get there and see that show then let all these changes be known. Give us that we apologize speech that Bill Ford gave, the one that goes we’re sorry for royally screwing you for the last 40 years, come back and see what all we’ve changed.