Young adults deserting movies?
There is definitely something going on re the state of movies right now, reflected in a number of articles out recently about this subject: Are young adults deserting movies?TheWrap had this piece with notes some startling figures:
According to one tracking firm, pre-release data measuring audience interest in the days leading up to the release of major films has consistently been down among moviegoers under the age of 25 this year.
Two key metrics, ‘intent to see’ and ‘self-reported,’ are down 10 percent since last year and 15 percent since 2009.
Males and females age 12–24 bought 32 percent of the movie tickets sold in the U.S. and Canada in 2010, down from 38 percent in 2005, and from 43 percent in 1990, according to data compiled from the MPAA and the International Motion Picture Almanac.
Back in the good old days of 1975, 12–24-year-olds purchased 60 percent of all movie tickets.
So seemingly something happening in terms of young adults and movie attendance in the U.S. and Canada. But what lies at the source of this downward attendance trend? One hypothesis in the article:
“We have failed to make going to the movies an emotional experience for them, meaning something that they invest in and get pleasure from. I think they care about content, but they don’t care so much about the delivery of it,” a studio marketing chief told TheWrap. “Middle-age people can chart the emotional beats of their lives through going to the movies. I do not think kids under 25 have that same kind of emotional connection with movie theaters”
Note those key phrases: “going to the movies… emotional connection with movie theaters.” Perhaps it’s not movies per se, but the experience of going to a movie theater. Teaching college students and being the parent of one myself, my anecdotal take is young adults are still connected to movies, they just don’t have the same loyalty to movie theaters as a delivery system. For them, watching a movie on a computer or TV screen has a set of advantages that in some way more than offsets whatever seeing a movie in a theater might offer.
On the other hand, there is a ginormous generation of people — Baby Boomers — who have a longstanding, deep-seated connection to going out to see a movie. Last year demonstrated this demo group still has legs witness the resurrection of adult drama witness the box office success of The King’s Speech ($277M), Black Swan ($229M), True Grit ($228M), The Social Network ($221M), and The Fighter ($108M) [all figures representing worldwide 2010 totals].
So given these presumed trends, how do you think Hollywood movie studios will react? We may have a precedent in place. Young adults, especially males, started abandoning prime time broadcast network TV back in the fall season of 2003. Here we are 8 years later and per this recent LAT article:
There have been several prominent stories lately about how the sales divisions of the broadcast networks are on a mission to convince Madison Avenue that viewers over the age of 50 are valuable.
Someone forgot to tell the folks in programming.
Last week was “upfront week” in New York, which is when the big broadcast networks -– CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox and the CW –- tout their fall programming to advertisers and once again it was one big episode of the bold and the beautiful.
CBS’s hottest comedy is about two attractive twentysomething waitresses. NBC is betting on a sitcom based on comedian Chelsea Handler’s books and comedy act that highlight her vodka consumption and bed hopping, and a drama set in a Playboy club. ABC, as usual, looks to the evil underbelly of suburbia for entertainment, while Fox is hoping that alt-music/indie movie queen Zooey Deschanel can score laughs. The CW’s idea of a show appealing to older viewers is casting one-time vampire slayer Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Unless the entertainment chiefs at the networks figure the best way to entice people over the age of 50 is to give them something young and hot to look at, it’s unclear how their new fall schedules are in sync with what their counterparts in sales are spinning to media buyers.
The reality is that for all the talk about the increasing value of older viewers, the networks are still youth-obsessed.
ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox can be cut some slack because their revenues are tied to ad sales and therefore, as the LAT article details, there are mitigating reasons why they still pursue younger demos, but what are the movie studios excuses?
What do you think is going on with the downward trend in movie theater ticket sales? What do you think will happen in the future: Will the studios continue to focus on teens and young adults? Or will they shift at least some of their energy toward making movies for an older demo group? Then again, maybe they aren’t thinking about age groups at all, but targeting movies for the international market where they are generating 65% of their theatrical revenues, a percentage that is likely to continue growing.
For a screenwriter, these are not abstract concerns. Rather such trends contribute to the choices we make in the material we write.
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