Stop paying for those commercials
Some years ago, when Disney took over operation of the California
Angels from Gene and Jackie Autry, the marketing minds that had made
Disneyland a tourist icon were asked to produce the same results at
Anaheim Stadium. So for about three months, those of us who came to
watch baseball were inundated in Disneyisms that had nothing to do
with the game.
There were oompah bands playing on the infield grass between
innings, a corps of dancing girls performing on top of the dugouts,
spectators bobbing in a tank for baseballs, races for kids in the
aisles and a dozen similar activities that I’ve been able to blot
from my memory. Because there was no escape from the incessant,
relentless noise for the sake of noise, it was impossible for the
fans to second-guess the team manager.
It apparently never occurred to these overpaid marketeers that the
only entertainment that would attract more paying customers -- as so
magnificently illustrated last season -- was a winning team.
The response from the people who came to see baseball and got
Mickey Mouse was instant, outraged and uncompromising: floods of
angry letters to the newspapers covering the Angels, scores of phone
calls to Disney and the Angels’ front office, reactions ranging from
disinterest to contempt at the ballpark.
And the most important reaction of all: tepid attendance. So
Disney got the word. All of the cute stuff stopped. Slowly, the
energy and money devoted to window dressing were redirected to the
product on the field. It took a few years, but tickets were being
scalped for $1,000 or more at Edison Field in October. For baseball.
I bring up this bit of history now because my wife and I broke our
pattern and went to a movie over the weekend, the overpraised
throwback to the 1930s and ‘40s called “Far From Heaven.”
Because there was a long line at the box office, it was clear that
we needed to get a seat while we could. That meant we were part of a
captive audience force-fed 20 minutes of hard-sell commercials before
the previews came on.
So I went into the movie full of anger at the people who subjected
me to this. I don’t think that is the mental climate in which the
creators of this film would like it to be seen. I also don’t think
that is of the slightest interest to the flacks pushing these
commercials.
My wife and are movie buffs. On average, we probably see a
half-dozen movies a month throughout the year -- and more when our
son is home. We are accustomed to and mostly welcome previews,
although lately they have been too long, too repetitive and revealed
too much.
The only other pre-feature activity visible for many years was the
earnest, institutional promo of the Los Angeles Times, which we
passed off as an odd anachronism.
Then Regal Theaters -- the largest theater chain in the world,
they tell us -- bought the grandfatherly and bankrupt Edwards
Theaters, and the hard-driving, hard-marketing Regal cowboys took
over and began using us to make big advertising bucks.
They didn’t ease into this. They plunged -- and now I hear the
same talk in theater lobbies that I once heard at Anaheim Stadium.
The Times has been hearing it, too. Reporter Lynn Smith did a
piece for last Sunday’s Calendar section about the “attack of the
40-foot ads.”
She quoted Kurt Hall, chief executive of Regal Cinemedia: “Our
primary goal is to just provide a good entertainment experience for
our customers and a good marketing platform to advertise brands and
products.”
This, of course, is baloney, but since he apparently said it with
a straight face, maybe he really doesn’t understand that the two
parts of this sentence are totally incompatible.
So he can be quite clear on this matter, let me say: Mr. Hall,
your commercials, however you serve them up, are not a good
entertainment experience for your customers, never have been and
never will be, and we deeply resent paying our money to see a movie
and then being used by you and your flacks.
Mr. Hall will, of course, brush this aside as petulance. He’s a
lot tougher than the Walt Disney Co., which wants to be loved as well
as make money. I have the feeling that being loved is not high on
Regal’s wish list. So if we are to make our point with Regal, it must
be done with the only muscle they understand: money. And because this
is a tough time for consumers, it will have to be done individually.
Consumers are the only identifiable group in this country with
little or no representation in the halls of power. It has been ever
thus, but it is even more so now, with an administration in
Washington pandering to the needs and desires of big business. So
what can folks who are angry about paying inflated movie prices only
to be exploited by Regal commercials do about it?
Well, for starters, we can quit going to the movies. My wife and I
figured out that for the price of two movies a month, we could buy
the gold-plated, gilt-edged, high-option cable TV package and wait
for most of the theatrical movies to show up there -- without
commercials -- while we gaining the increasing high-quality crop of
cable TV originals.
When a movie simply must be seen on a big screen in a theater, or
we can’t wait until it gets to cable, we’ll try to go at odd hours so
we can slip in after the commercials. So far -- except for “Far From
Heaven” -- this has been working fine. It’s likely that Regal won’t
notice our defection on their profit-and-loss statement, but if
enough of us do the same thing, they might.
There is also the time-honored way of boycotting products
advertised on theater screens and letting the companies involved know
you are doing it and why. Or writing the movie producer to tell him
his film was badly showcased. Or telling the theater owner you won’t
be back if he doesn’t cut out the commercials.
Or encouraging your city or county government to pass a law
requiring theaters to tell people in movie ads that there will be
commercials and when they will be on. Or just booing when the ads
come on.
If all this sounds frivolous, at least it allows us a small sense
of control over a piece of our own environment -- at a time when we
seem to be out of the loop on larger matters.
If we can’t have a voice in whether or not we go to war, at least
we can try to get commercials out of our movie houses. Just like we
got Mickey Mouse out of our ballpark.
* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column
appears Thursdays.
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