Forty-five minutes later it rolled. As the patrons left, they were given readmits.

It's pretty amazing that even in the company town, some exhibitors don't take enough pride to hire qualified union projectionists.

(It was a General Cinema.)

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I think almost every industry is going through this kind of 'cost-reduction.' I work for an electronics company (I do PC board design) and design cycles are shorter and shorter. But the tools also become better. I use to hand tape mylars to create PCB's; now I have a PC. In the same way, I use to run one carbon arc theater manually; now I run eight with automation.

I don't think the exibitor end of the motion picture industry is at rock-bottom yet; I think other industries have cheapened much more. Don't get me wrong: the quality of showmanship is much lower then it was 30 years ago, but all thing consitered (high inflation, high real estate prices, high labor costs, EPA, OSHA, ADA act, theaters still only getting 10% of the ticket price, lack of quality product, etc.) I think the quality is still at least OK and the price of a ticket is still a bit low.

Of course, we know there will always be a few garbage dump theaters, but that's true of any product/company.

My thought is that training is the key. It seems that it could provide the biggest gain, at the lowest cost. A knowledgeable person can make a big difference, even in a dump theater. It really doesn't take much more time to do something right, but someone has to show people how. If there was a inexpensive, nationally standardized training course, I think things might improve. Someone might create a curriculum, then send it to commumity collages, techinal schools, 'continuing education' classes, etc. Even if there's no 'hands-on', a person would probably be better off then being trained by the current booth idiot.

That's why I was a little disappointed with SMPTE. I thought they were in a good political position to create training classes, training manuals, etc. SMPTE started with that first projectionist manual, screen check program; then seemed to lose interest. Luckly, Kodak has stepped in and is doing something.

As mentioned in another thread about upselling customers to other products: This happens everywhere. It's a known fact that it does raise per capita at theatres, which makes that theatre more profitable, which means that it will have more to spend in the booth. I used to work at a theatre that had such a high percap that the company would do anything for our booth, because they knew it was profitable. That included all theatres getting DTS players. So, if all it takes is Joe Concession to upsell, to get me the bell and whistles in my booth, then I say upsell all you want. As far as prices, well, you could just close the concession stand at all the theatres, but then we'd all be out of jobs. No first-run theatre makes enough on admissions to stay profitable.

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A result of this "typical" British/European attitude and lack of tolerance to shabby presentation is to employ professionals, or at least people who can SUCCESSFULLY carry out the job.

It's rare (apart from the US-owned UCI chain) to find people employed as Manger/Operator or Usher/Operator in a Cinema here. Most have dedicated operators, no kids in the booth, half-decent/excellent equipment as well as company field engineer teams for installation and regular maintenance. Warner-Village theatres in the UK even have a permanent training facility set up for new projectionists, as do Odeon Cinemas. The result.....little or no breakdowns, and *happy* customers. Fair enough, there is always going to be the odd problem here and there, but in comparison, how many breakdowns a week would one of your 20 screen teenage-run Googa-plexes have?