Let's talk about show times

[Mark Strube]

Have you found that certain "prime time" showtimes sell more tickets than others? Have you found that times closer to dinner time sell more snacks or food? (Eg. 6:15-6:30 instead of 6:45-7:15.)

We operate small single and twin neighborhood cinemas, and the ownership wants us to run shows closer to 6:15-6:30 to encourage dinner sales (we are full service). But, I'm concerned that will hurt overall attendance.

[Mike Blakesley]

When I got into the business our showtime was always 7:30. When we bought the theatre we vowed to have more shows, so we went to 7 and 9 on weekends, but kept with 7:30 the rest of the week.

That held up until we started running pre-show ads, combined with the increasing run time of movies these days.... the 85-to 105 minute movie has evolved into the average of about 115 to 125 minutes today, so if you add trailers and ads, the weekend late shows were having to start at 9:30 more often than not, so we went to a policy of any movie over two hours long, we'd just have one show at 7:30. That has led to fewer and fewer weeks where we'd have late shows, to the point where hardly anybody has been coming to them. So, about 3 months ago we decided to go back to the olden days and now we have one show at 7:30 every night. We've had zero complaints and I don't think we've even had any comments on it, people have just gotten used to it.

If we ever go the "recliners" route for seating, we might need to re-think it. I've thought about doing a 4:30 or 5:00 show along with the 7:30, but we've never done that.

[Frank Cox]

When I initially set up my theatre I usually played two separate shows every week, something at 7pm and a different movie at 9pm (or 9:15 if the 7pm show was a long one). Kids show or maybe a romance or something at 7pm, then a blast-em show or horror movie at 9pm, and 2:00pm matinees on Saturday and Sunday if I have a kids show.

Now I'm rarely (almost never) allowed to have more than one show per week, so I play kids shows (and extra long adult shows) at 7:00pm, and adult shows at 8:00pm. Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:00pm when my movie that week is a kids show.

In short, today I play 52 different movies per year here instead of the 100 or so that I used to.

[Mark Strube]

I should specify - the 6:15/:30 shows are the only show for us M-T, and then we have 2 shows Fri (6:30 & 9), and additional matinees Sat & Sun. Previously, we scheduled more towards 7:00. We just started this so I don't have an idea of results quite yet. Just concerns.

[Mike Blakesley]

I play kids shows (and extra long adult shows) at 7:00pm, and adult shows at 8:00pm

You might want to re-think your matinee stance... We used to only play kids shows at matinees, but these days almost anything goes for matinees. We are playing "1917" right now and we had our biggest single crowd of the week at our Sunday matinee show. A lot of adults don't want to stay up that late, especially older ones. Anymore we only skip the matinee if we're playing a genuine flop, and sometimes not even then.

[Martin McCaffery]

I keep threatening to be the only theatre in America that doesn't show films at night.
We used to be 7:00 and 9:00 nightly. We eventually dropped the weekday 9:00 show and went with 8 as a compromise, with 7:00 & 9:00 on weekends (and the occaisional 3:00 Sat Sun mat). Moved the 8:00 to 7:30. Dropped the Sunday 9:00 because it was averaging 3 people a show, eventually dropped the other 9:00's. Now we do 5:00 & 7:30 on Fri, Sat, Sun (with the occasional 3:00 matinee) and 7:30 on weekdays, with the occasional 5:00 weekday. The 5:00 show is almost always the most popular. 7:30 Sunday is the new 9:00.
I have a really old audience. Come daylight savings time, they flock to the shows that get out before the sun goes down.
We are, also, an arthouse, so how this all applies to a first run pop theatre is beyond me.

[Sean Falk]

We do 4 and 7 week days. 4, 7, and 9:30/10 on Friday, 1, 4, 7, 9:30/10 on Saturday, and then 1, 4, 7 on Sunday.
We have trouble getting people to come to the 9:30/10 shows, but since we have about 20 minutes of pre-show ads and like 8 mins of trailers I can't move them up much further most of the time

[Daniel Fredrickson]

I'm my experience, showtimes are complicated.

I think the success depends a lot on your market and might require some experimentation. Are there any restaurants nearby that might steal customers or people that aren't interested in the in-theater dining? Also, where's the theater located? If you're in the northern latitudes, you're going to really feel the pain of earlier showtimes during the summer when the sun is up until 10pm. Here in the Pacific Northwest, many people seem to prefer to go outside during summer nights instead of catching the newest flick If the weather is good we usually take a bit of a hit on our earlier summer evening shows. If you're down in the South or somewhere that it is hot, this probably isn't so much the case.

We have a smaller rural theater that on most nights only runs one evening set. People tend to come earlier for any type of movie so we usually run most movies in the 6:00-6:45pm range... we've tried later times for all types of films but they don't really every bring in a crowd. At this location, sales are pretty solid either way but we don't really have any restaurant or convenience store competition that close to the theater.

On the other hand, we used to have a large suburban complex in a mid-sized Metro area where showtime performance was heavily tied to the movie. If I scheduled a PG family movie at say 6:10, we'd have a huge turnout. If I pushed it back to 7:15, almost never the same turnout. On the other-hand, if I scheduled a horror flick at 6:00, it would be empty, but 7:45 and I'd have a packed house. I'd usually see better snack sales for the earlier times... probably because people were planning on eating afterward but their stomachs got the better of them when they got to the lobby.

My main thought would be to try to get a feel for customer behavior, and don't be afraid to give it a try.