As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

I’ll Stan Alamo til the day I die. Even took my family there immediately after I got married ha!

Here is why Alamo has set the bar high for being more than a “movie theater”, in no particular order: 1. Their programming AKA the movies they choose to show is highly curated. You’ll have your standard summer blockbusters, a weird Wednesday film (usually a cult classic from the past generations), screenings with Q&A after the film with directors, actors, etc. As a movie goer I engage a ton with their marketing to look out for these events, because yes, I would absolutely love to see Uncut Gems and have the Safdie brothers and Adam Sandler talk about their experience. Those are more rare but just another opportunity to create a long lasting memory of a film, even if it sucked.

2. The pre-programming is custom, curated and so clever, it makes me ALWAYS want to get there earlier. For most movies they find similar footage or clips that have intertwining themes to the main film (early footage of actors in the movie, etc). It’s usually on the funnier side of things.

3. The no bs talking and phones policy is amazing. It’s enforced and if you want to experiment being a rat, you can even alert servers of guests that are breaking the rules without fear of retaliation. Finally a place to enjoy the film without most distractions.

4. It’s nice to plan a dinner and a movie and have it be all in one place. While the food is fine and not completely mind blowing, it’s good for a movie night and the popcorn is fantastic. Also +1 the queso as well. Alcohol selection is great and you can basically order whatever you want and will likely be able to make it (cocktail-wise).

5. When it existed, the Alamo season pass was amazing. $30 bucks a month, a movie a day and you select your seat ahead of time (you select your seat regardless of the pass, but still). I hope it comes back!

Some downsides: 1. You sometimes will smell food that might not be your favorite. Your a veggie that doesn’t like the smell of a burger, sorry, you likely are gonna have all the food smells.

2. Servers darting around the theatre for a lot of the movie. They are usually pretty sneaky but you get some Paperboy PTSD of enemies coming out in your peripheral vision.

3. YMMV with each Alamo. Pre-pandemic some were franchises and some were corporate. The corporate ones were so much better and the franchises just seemed to be poorly run across the board.

So many other things they hit out of the park, screenings for families and folks with autism (you can talk, etc) as well as screenings for parents with young kids (more talking and likely some more crying). Lots of accessibility screenings for the deaf and blind. The list goes on…

If The restructure for Alamo works out, you’ll be seeing more and more of the old guard changing things to align more like Alamo, and that definitely will be a good thing for the film industry. Just my 2¢

A lot of it is hand-food, yeah, which I'd never thought about but it makes sense. Most of the dishes are also made of some sort of plastic-composite instead of ceramic or metal, which probably helps. In either case I haven't really noticed the noise; I'm more likely to notice someone loudly chomping popcorn a couple seats over than forks clanging on dishes, which, what can you do. Another thing that helps is almost nobody orders boxed candy because you can get much better desserts, so you never hear M&M's and such rattling around. Glasses are also open-top, so there's no straw squeaking either.

I can totally imagine that. I cancelled my TV subscription as it was all about corona all the time. So depressing.

Now that I've done without for so long I don't think ever getting live TV again. My use of mainstream news sites has also dropped to near zero, just a one check per day. I focus more on tech news these days (stuff that really matters :) )

> amazed that companies haven't figured out that advertisements are far less effective than they claim to be

I was once asked to do some stats on the marketing effectiveness of a company I was at. Not my job but I really hated a couple of the people in the marketing dept so I went at the task anyway. I had long had suspicious that the advertising was mostly smoke and mirrors so I was glad to find out that I was right. There was basically no correlation to sales and marketing spending, campaigns or anything they were doing. Except for a couple of basic common sense ad placements. They were wasting millions a year.

What do you think happened? Surprise happy ending. At the end of the year they shut down the marketing dept and outsourced the basic ad placements for a fixed fee.

I believe the OP is referencing the fact that over the years, the cable tv/telephone groups have been buying up production houses (i.e., Time-Warner owned by AT&T, NBCUniversal owned by Comcast, etc.) and is implying that the owner (AT&T, Comcast) owns the production house (Time-Warner, NBCUniversal) not to directly profit from the production house output per. se., but to provide content with which to use to incentivize people into paying for their other media distribution products.