An opportunity if they want it

Businesses don’t really want to do business.

Rushfield at the Ankler writes another incisive piece on the failure of the movie industry. The decline started a LONG time ago after WW2 when young folks moved into the suburbs, had kids, and the theaters didn’t follow them. Cable TV and its newer web-based streaming versions, plus big home TVs, removed the rest of the attraction.

Theaters could be doing more to recover part of the loss, though they’ll never be as dominant as they were in the 30s.

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Everywhere genuine entertainment emerges, the public still turns out for it.

Ankler Rule #1 — this is a business of hits — applies not just to individual slates, but the business as a whole. As bleak as things seem overall, a business that can create hits will attract people wanting to make some. This remains an enormously attractive business to be in if there’s still oil to be found in them thar hills.

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Well, here’s one opportunity in the land of oil, if not the land of hills. Enid has been trying for many years to regain a movie theater. When I lived there in the ’70s it had three downtown theaters, one in a mall, and two driveins. Now it has nothing. Citizens have to drive 100 miles to OKC or Wichita if they want to see a real movie.

The city government has been offering all sorts of special deals to the theater chains. So far nothing has worked, but the mayor hints that one deal may soon succeed.

In service of Rushfield’s main point, Enid also has a live community theater, the Gaslight. It was active in the 70s and appears to be even bigger now. So the appetite for in-person entertainment is unquestionably strong, which should be a hint to the movie theaters.

Enid’s city government has always been highly competent by any standards. It’s clearly still up to par despite gradual decline of most industries. It looks gloriously brilliant by comparison with Spokane’s NAZI TORTURE CAMP, fanatically devoted to ruining the streets and cultivating crime and killing businesses. Working 24/7 to obliterate the city!