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Oct 12, 2006 9:43 am US/Central
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1985: When The VCR Was New
Videocassettes Were Considered A Major Threat To Movie Theaters
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
Some technology always seems to be changing.
Recent reports say major retailers including Target have complained about the lower price for downloading movies compared with buying them on DVD. This may all make the VCR seem antiquated, but 21 years ago, it was the symbol of changing technology.
And as former CBS 2 reporter Susan Anderson reported, the VCR was seen as a huge threat to the movie theater industry in the 1980s.
In 1985, a blockbuster could account for as much as 45 percent of industry revenues, but movie theater attendance had dropped 15 percent nationwide. A scarcity of big hits that year contributed, but video rentals were seen as major competition.
At the time, M&R Amusement Company of Skokie was the second largest theater owner in the Chicago area.
A representative of the company said: "One threat that I do feel from VCRs is that in some ways I think of them like a TV dinner, whereby the people, if they watch the movie on television, they get the experience, but they lose the flavor and they lose the enjoyment."
One measure of the impact of VCRs on movie theaters in the 1980s was the pornographic film industry. The advent of the VCR was followed by a 40 percent decline in the number of movie theaters showing sexually explicit films. And of course, there has been a massive transition of adult material to the Internet market since then.
While the movie business softened in 1985, the video business was booming. The year before, Americans had spent $2.7 billion to rent movies and $3.6 billion to attend movies. The time when the figures were equal was forecast as not far off.
Nearly a third of all homes were expected to have VCRs by the end of 1985, and not too long afterward, they were ubiquitous, before being supplanted by DVD players.
But late CBS 2 Movie Critic Gene Siskel emphasized that the quality of films was also a factor in the drop in attendance in 1985.
"The quality of films this year has not been as good as last year, and there's been no big box office breakthrough film," Siskel said, "so we should have a year that's off."
Video rentals continued to rise as box office attendance fell for some years after this report first aired. But today, with the advent of services such as Netflix as well as downloading, as well as a trend toward video rental has declined dramatically. And of course, few major chains still offer videocassettes for rental.
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)