No more 9:00 shows

[Martin McCaffery]

I've noticed that the local AMC theaters quit having 9:00 or later shows when they reopened in Fall of 2020. The latest any last show around here is 8:15, most are between 7-7:30. How wide spread is this practice? Is it just AMC or are other chains doing this?

For the record, we got rid of 9:00 shows years ago. Discovered 5:00 shows do better with our audience (old). Changed to 4:00 shows when we reopened in Fall of 2020 and they do ok, depending on the film (and on Daylight Savings time).

[Scott Norwood]

I have no idea why, but this has been a trend here for a few years now, both at the chains and the independents.

[Randy Stankey]

People want to get home by midnight.

Your 9:00 p.m. shows probably won't be letting out until 11:00 or 11:30. You can have your people start cleaning while the last shows are running but somebody has to be around to let the last customers out, lock the doors and shut off the lights.

Some people have a weird idea that there is or should be some kind of curfew because of COVID. Some places might actually have curfews. It's almost as if people think the virus is more deadly after dark. For sure, we want people to stay out of crowded public spaces so that they aren't exposed but people are not more likely to get sick after midnight than before. What's the difference, really, as long as people take precautions like they should?

If your theater has to perform extra cleaning procedures for COVID, that's also going to make it take longer to get home after the doors are locked.

Then there is the problem you have when some of your workers still have Cinderella Licenses and have to be home before 11:00 p.m.
Who needs to go home first? How many permission slips will the manager need to write? Some places don't allow "blanket" permission letters and require a permission slip for each time a Junior Driver needs to be out after the Cinderella Hour.

After all that, you've still got to consider whether there will be enough business for late shows to make payroll and expenses worthwhile. In a big theater, you might need to keep a half dozen workers on until the customers leave. Even if you only have one person in the lobby, one person at the podium and one person managing you still might have more employees in the building than customers. It might not be worth it.

[Martin McCaffery]

When we quit doing 9:00 shows, we were averaging 2 people a show. We're an arthouse so, as I said, we skew old. 9:00 or later shows were standard for as long as I've been in the business (1974), so I'm wondering if COVID is just the excuse for getting rid of something that was no longer working but was "tradition"?

[Mike Blakesley]

For about 40 years we did two shows on Friday/Saturday, 7:00 and 9:00. Sometimes the late show would be 9:15 or on very rare occasions, 9:30. If the movie was too long to fit that schedule, we would only have the 7:00 show.

In the past couple of years, movies have gotten longer to the point where we'd only have a late show maybe one out of five movies, so people just got out of the habit, so when we reopened after the Covid closure we did away with the 9:00 show, but we added a Sunday matinee at 1:00. We had been doing such a matinee only for very popular or kids' shows, but we decided to do it for all movies. It has been successful, quite often we have a better crowd for the matinee than for the evening show on Sunday.

[Steve Guttag]

It really varies by location (and clientele). We have sites that routinely have 9:00 shows and some that even do later (depends on the season, movies...etc.) Heck, "Spider-Man" added a lot of shows to a schedule, including later than 10:00!

We have some theatres have a 10:00AM crowd so that is when they start their day. Again, it all really depends on the area, what is out and what the "typical" patron of the theatre is as what shows makes the most sense.

[Randy Stankey]

... I'm wondering if COVID is just the excuse...

It peeves me off to no end when people use COVID as an excuse!

It's one thing when there aren't enough customers to support later shows but, sometimes, you just know that it's a flimsy excuse!

We have to work ten to twelve hour days, six or even seven days a week. We go to bed at night feeling tired and we wake up in the morning, still feeling tired. We work every day so that other people can have the things they want or need.

When somebody invokes the "COVID excuse" I often read it as code for "I'm a lazy bum."

I get it. Shipping and trucking take longer. I understand that it takes more time to do things because people have to clean and restock under conditions that are more strict. Sure, people want to go home after a long day of work. So do I.

Depending on workload, I often don't get home from work until 1:30 or 2:30 in the morning. I don't even wake up until 10:00 or 12:30 in the afternoon, some days.
I've got one or two hours to do my grocery shopping or to run errands before I have to get ready for work. It's dark when I get home. Going to the movies or a restaurant are right out for me.

I'm lucky if I have one day off in a week in order to do my chores, run errands or go grocery shopping.

I know that there are lots of people who work just as grueling a schedule as I do but I still feel insulted when I go some place and hear those flimsy excuses!

[Mike Blakesley]

We have thought about adding a 4:00 show on Fri-Sat-Sun, but that would conflict with both of our day jobs, complicate the cleaning schedule (our cleaning people also have other day jobs), and make it a lot harder to schedule concession workers, a lot of whom are in after-school activities. Plus I want to have A LITTLE damn free time, so one show per day is it (except on Sundays). We're doing an increasing number of private shows, too. But, a lot of small town theaters are only open weekends (one I know of is only open Friday, Sunday and Tuesday....can't figure that one out) so I figure we're doing OK.

Certain studios are doing everything they can to choke us off. I'm just hoping they don't have us completely dead before I'm completely dead myself.

[Mike Croaro]

Movies have gotten so overly long in length that the "late shows" start too late....and get out too late for many. Add to the overly long running time trailers and tv commercial time.

[Lyle Romer]

Back in the day (mid/late 90's) I used to find that the most popular show time was 8:30-8:45 on a weekend. We only ever had that with multiple prints usually or something with a very long running time where we'd have a 5PM and then 8:30 PM and no late show except maybe on Fri or Sat if running midnight shows.

People seemed to like it, especially on the weekend, because they could go out to eat at around 6 and still make the movie without stress.

[Adam Fraser]

We used to do 7:00 PM and 9:00-10:00 PM on 100% of shows from Memorial to Labor Day, and on Friday and Saturday the rest of the year if the film warranted it. We stopped several years ago when the late shows dwindled to a point that it just was not worth it. We got tired of getting home from work at 12:30-2:00 AM for just an extra couple hundred per week in gross sales.

I have noticed now that with our reduced schedule that we did not lose much in total grosses and don't anticipate bringing them back other than the occasional summer blockbuster.

Unless business gets back to where it was in the late 90's (unlikely) we will continue to chug along with 7:00 PM only shows for the foreseeable future. 20+ years of 60+ hour weeks is enough for us when combined with the retail business that we run during the day.

[James Wyrembelski]

I'm seeing more and more smaller places getting rid of the evening shows on Sunday as well. Daytime shows on Sundays have always been worth it and have always been one of our best times of the week.

I reinstated Sunday nights later in 2020 but I wish I would have eliminated them after the holidays. Good example was this last Sunday. Had about 100 for the 3pm show of Sing 2 only to nosedive down to 5 patrons for the 7pm. They make sense in the summer but I think they need to go in the winter.

We did the 9pm shows when we first reopened back in 2018. Sometimes they could do pretty good business, but generally it was pretty quiet. I would hold staff because you never knew if it was going to do any business or not. We always tried to get the auditorium spotless after the 7 show as well. Between trying to clean up, get people out, and some of the folks showing up early waiting to get in. It just didn't make sense for the few extra that may or may not show late in the evening and pay people to hang out just in case, stress about getting everything back together in time, and get home at 12am-2am.

Pretty much all of the people that would attend the late shows just came to the regular 7pm show after eliminating them. I noticed no real difference in gross.

[Mike Rivest]

And don't forget to factor in longer commuting times.

[Martin McCaffery]

I've joked that we may be the first theatre in America to eliminate all evening shows, but it looks like some of you may beat me to it!

[Scott John]

We have had to adjust our schedules so our latest movie doesn't start later than 8pm..8:30 at the latest. Our numbers have generally been pretty atrocious for those late shows. We are more of an arthouse theatre so our main audience is families for early matinees and the 45+ crowd for evening movies.

We actually started doing better by adding a 2:45 show in the afternoon instead and we get a lot more seniors and older folks out who want to be home by dark or may not want to navigate the snow and weather at night. Unfortunately those folks don't buy a lot of concession items, but at least we are getting butts in the door. Our main weekday times are 2:45; 5:15; and 7:45 with the later movies adjusting for movie length if required.

With the nearby chain multiplex having only designated seating due to Covid restrictions I spent a little time popping on seeing what their late show numbers were and they were bad too once the start times were after 9pm. I guess with 6 screens they can afford just have a couple employees stay late and it is still worthwhile even if they are only getting 4-6 people per screen on late shows.