popular thinking

BIG SCREEN OR SMALL SCREEN: As everyone in the media debates the recent 17-week stretch of "declining" box-office figures, our TV and film critics weigh in with a smackdown of sorts, moderated by me.

And here we go...

Why is the cineplex emptier this year?
Are the films simply awful? Are ticket prices too high? Would people rather watch movies at home on DVD, cable or pay-per-view?
Whatever the excuse, the nation's box office slump has entered its fifth month.

Movies:All the cool kids go to the theater.

Television: All the smart people watch at home.

Box-office receipts from cinemas nationwide have fallen for 17 straight weeks, or since late February when the Academy Awards season ended. Overall attendance is down, too, with 8.57 percent fewer tickets sold this year, according to Exhibitor Relations Co.
Ticket sales during last year's record box-office run actually declined, as well, down 1.1 percent from 2003. But that was offset by higher ticket prices, on average up from $6.03 in 2003 to $6.25 last year.
DVD sales, meanwhile, continue to soar, up 33 percent from 2003 to 2004 to $15.5 billion. Add $5.7 billion in DVD rentals last year and another $3.2 billion in VHS sales and rentals and consumers accounted for $24.5 billion in home-video revenues in 2004.
Last year's box-office revenues of $9.42 billion pale in comparison.
Is home video overtaking the cinema as the dominant venue for movies?
In a poll last week, Ipsos Public Affairs found that almost three of every four adults prefer to watch movies at home. Only 22 percent of respondents said they'd rather see films in the theater with the masses.
And 25 percent of respondents said they haven't even been to a cinema in the past year.
By comparison, 37 percent said they had ordered a pay-per-view movie at home, while 5 percent had downloaded a feature-length film from the Internet.
But other advances and innovations also have made it easier for moviegoers to stay home. Several million consumers in the past couple of years have joined services such as Netflix that rent DVDs through the mail and don't charge late fees.
Sales of high-definition digital TVs continue to rise. The Consumer Electronics Association expects this year's sales to double the 7.3 million sets sold in 2004.
Another factor to consider: The dwindling wait time for first-run films to reach DVD.
Hitch, which earned $179 million at the cineplex, arrived on DVD last week only a month after its final weekend in cinemas.
2929 Entertainment, run by Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, aims to eliminate that big-screen/small-screen boundary entirely. It helps that it owns the Landmark Theatre chain as well as the HDNet channel on DirectTV.
Earlier this year, it released the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, simultaneously in its cinemas and on HDNet. The film was still on 91 screens last weekend, earning $3.4 million to date.