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Topic: Errors in newspaper ads

David Stambaugh
Film God

Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002

posted 07-03-2002 12:22 PM

It seems like it's not uncommon for the Eugene daily newspaper (The Register-Guard) to have errors in its theater and showtime listings. The most common mistake seems to be running a display ad or a stack ad 1 day early, i.e. a display ad runs on Thursday and says "Now Showing!" but that movie doesn't open until Friday.

However, today there's a blunder in one of the ads and it isn't the newspaper's fault. The Fox display ad for "Like Mike" says the movie is showing exclusively at the Regal Springfield Quad, complete with its address. The thing is, the Springfield Quad closed almost 3 years ago! And even then, it was a 2nd-run dollar theater.

How does something like this happen?

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David Favel
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 764
From: Ashburton, New Zealand
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 07-03-2002 05:02 PM

Basically here if the ad ain't correct, we don't pay.

It is the responsibility of the paper to send the person paying (or the interested party) a proof.

If the proof is incorrect & I don't correct it then it is my fault.

The papers should have all the information to place a correct ad.
If they make a mistake, don't pay for it.

We had 1 month where half our ads were wrong. I pointed out to the owner that he was losing $$$ per month. This made him get off his butt & bust some caps in the setting department.

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Kyle Caudill
Film Handler

Posts: 92
From: Wichita Falls, TX
Registered: May 2002

posted 07-03-2002 05:10 PM

David,

Usually the co-op ads are done by somebody in the corporate office at one of the theatre chains. They will call someone at the film company telling them if they are going to pay or not pay and what info to put on the ad. Probly someone at fox screwed up. We have a competitor in our town and this happened once when it said playing exclusively at Regal, when two other theatres in town were playing it. Our chain decided it was not worth paying the money to place our name on the ad. The person at the film company messed up and put the wrong line it. They thought Regal was only playing it cause we did not pay them money for that co-op ad.

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Charles Everett
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1470
From: New Jersey
Registered: May 2001

posted 07-05-2002 04:37 PM

There's a similar mistake this week in the NYC area. The stack ad for Men in Black II in the Village Voice wrongly says that MIIB opens at the UA Southampton. In this case it may have something to do with deadline pressure: The Voice has a final deadline Monday afternoon, goes to press Tuesday morning and is on the street Tuesday night (Wednesday in the suburbs). This type of mistake pops up from time to time.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 07-07-2002 04:07 PM

Many theaters have to have their CO-OP ads placed no later than Monday or Tuesday morning at the latest for films opening on Friday. Of course a lot can happen in between the time placing the ad and getting the film prints.

I would say this is the leading cause for technical errors on sound/projection format listings. The Carmike theater here in Lawton had "Hey Arnold" listed as being in DTS for opening weekend. But when the print came in it had time code on the print and no discs in the can. So the ad had to be changed. Many theaters have simply dropped all sound format listings from their ads for a variety of reasons. You have the situations I just described above, along with information getting messed up between the theater management and the paste up department at the newspaper. It is easier just to not bother with it. I do think some theaters simply omit presentation format info to hide just how ill-equipped their theaters are. Usually the "all digital" ones will say something about it somehow in their marketing.

I think is really bad when a newspaper art dept. can't even get the name of the theater correct in the ad. That's pretty sad.

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Paul Turner
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 115
From: Corvallis, OR, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 07-08-2002 09:54 PM

The paper in my town has never gotten the times right. Many times when they send a proof, they don't run the corrected copy. So, I have to live with "Please Call or Log-On for Showtimes" on the top of my ads.

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Dustin Mitchell
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1865
From: Mondovi, WI, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 07-09-2002 02:20 AM

I believe Fox is one of the studies who use an agency to place their ads. Normaly (at least with Carmike) the theatre manager or city manager is responsible for placing ads. That includes choosing where the co-ops will be in relation to the ladder and providing the newspaper with accurate showtimes.

Some distributors though, Fox included, use and ad agency to place all their ads in newspapers across the country. The showtimes listed in the directory still come from the theatre manager or city manager, but the large ad for the movie is placed by the studio with no communication as to showtimes or sound format. Normally at the bottum of the ad it will say 'See theatre directory for showtimes' or something to that effect.

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Charles Everett
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1470
From: New Jersey
Registered: May 2001

posted 07-10-2002 06:10 PM

It's been said before and it'll be said again.

Who is most guilty of this practice? Miramax! This so-called "independent" studio can't get its stack ads straight.

The Village Voice, 7/16 (out today): Stack ad for Halloween Resurrection lists only Dolby Digital and Dolby as sound formats. Halloween Resurrection is in SRD/SR/SDDS/DTS.

Newark Star-Ledger, 7/5: Stack ad for The Importance of Being Earnest includes the line "And at Theatres Everywhere!" The Importance of Being Earnest is a limited-release picture.

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Darryl Spicer
Film God

Posts: 3250
From: Lexington, KY, USA
Registered: Dec 2000

posted 07-10-2002 06:17 PM

The Importance of Being Earnest is playing here in Lexington at our downtown art theater. So It must be a little wider than limited. They don't usually get the real limited releases.

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Charles Everett
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1470
From: New Jersey
Registered: May 2001

posted 07-13-2002 03:00 PM

Miramax

mades the same mistakes in yesterday's Newark Star-Ledger.

Darryl: EDI considers a limited release (arthouse, Bollywood, IMAX, whatever) as 600 or fewer theaters. The Importance of Being Earnest is only in 176 theaters this week per Box Office Mojo.

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David Stambaugh
Film God

Posts: 4021
From: Eugene, Oregon
Registered: Jan 2002

posted 01-24-2003 12:19 PM

Blimey! Miramax's big newspaper display ad for "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" here has it showing "EXCLUSIVELY AT REGAL CINEMA WORLD 8". Problem is, it's actually showing exclusively at Cinemark 17. heh heh. [Wink]

They did get all 3 digital sound logos in the ad though. [Big Grin]

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Jack Ondracek
Film God

Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002

posted 01-25-2003 03:07 PM

We have provided our ads to the local paper in a "camera ready" form of one kind or another since laser printers became widely available.

Our local paper was (still is) much like the ones many of you are describing... curiously unable to effectively do their jobs on a long-term basis... that being the process of getting an ad from the client, through sales, composition, and the other departments involved... sometimes represented by different unions, each unwilling to account to the other. The net effect being that we lose our advertising during the busiest days of our week, and the paper absolves itself by crediting back the cost of the ad (big deal).

After years of dealing with finding our ad in different sections of the paper from our competitors (once we were in the obits!), occasionally upside down (back when they waxed them in)... sometimes just not updated, I took everything away from them except the process of inserting the ad I provide.

The paper still screws up now and then, though technology has helped lessen these occasions dramatically.

We still do up our ad in our office, like we have for years... except now we convert the final copy to a pdf file and email it to their composition department. They just take the attachment & insert it on the page. So far, this seems to be the best procedure between client and newspaper. We enhance the "delivery accountability" aspect by emailing the ad to an alias off our web site, which forwards copies of the ad to our manager(s), our newspaper account exec, the composition department and me. There have been no cases of "gee, I didn't get it" thus far!

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Barry Floyd
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1079
From: Lebanon, Tennessee, USA
Registered: Mar 2000

posted 01-28-2003 04:21 PM

Ahhh... the dreaded PDF file. We've been running "Coming Soon" advertisements promoting our new theatre, and have found it much easier to provide the local newspaper with a PDF file, as opposed to letting them do it, and never getting it right.

I can create the ad with something simple like Microsoft Publisher, then I've used a "free-trial" conversion tool from the Adobe web-site, which converts the publisher file to PDF.

Does anybody know a good "free" or relatively inexpesive software to use to convert these files. Once my "free-trial" is up, I won't have another way to do it.

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Daryl C. W. O'Shea
Film God

Posts: 3977
From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from)
Registered: Jun 2002

posted 01-28-2003 05:00 PM

I know the academic price for Adobe Acrobat is $89CDN. Usually the standard price isn't that much more (but I know, that's still another expense you'd like to avoid).

I haven't had any acceptable results from 'free' of 'knock-off' versions of PDF generators.

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