Leaders discuss challenges of small town movie theaters
In early February of last year an article in the News-Register reported the rather alarming news that due to declining attendance, Aurora’s 12th Street Theater, run by the non-profit Hamilton Recreation, might be on the verge of closing after a 30-year run. Today, 14 months later there is no talk of closure among the theater’s leadership, however, there are still challenges to be overcome and attendance continues to be an issue.
Three of those leaders met on a recent Monday evening in the lobby of the theater on the northwest corner of the square to discuss the current situation and to express their appreciation for the many volunteers and local businesses and organizations that help keep the facility alive as a place for family fun and entertainment.
That group included Hamilton Recreation Interim President Tina Collingham, Theater Manager Sheryl Hall and Director Kathy Dyer. They said most of the problems since the theater was created by Hamilton Recreation more than 30 years ago have occurred since the COVID pandemic in 2020.
The current crisis & COVID
Hall said the current attendance decline has more to do with the situation in Hollywood since COVID than it does with interest on the part of local movie patrons.
“We’re nowhere near what we were before the pandemic, we know for sure,” Hall reported. “If you go back to 2019, which was before the pandemic, we averaged 221 people a weekend.”
Hall said figures for 2022 show the per-weekend average for the year had dropped to 115.
“There were a lot of things going on then and the studios were holding movies because they thought streaming was the answer,” she said. “For some of that time we were actually only part-time, only doing two weekends a month, because there wasn’t content to play.”
Hall said by 2023 the weekend average had climbed back up to 123, however, she said for the first quarter of 2024 the average has dropped to 75 movie-goers per weekend.
Hall says this time the culprit seems to be the strikes that took place in Hollywood last year which have impacted the number of movies being released.
“And now that’s starting to hit where there are lapses in content,” Hall said. “Actually, releases are down about four a week for movies and family movies aren’t being made. There’ll be only three family animated movies released in six months time, and that’s the bulk of our audience.”
Collingham said she sometimes gets nostalgic for the old days in the theater business when movies could be scheduled several weeks out and advertising could be started well in advance of a movie’s opening.
“It was so easy for us to say here are the next four movies, and we would have a whole entire month’s worth of movies and we could advertise that and people could plan around that,” Collingham said. “The community found it easy to plan and say, ‘I don’t really like this. Look, this is a movie that’s coming up and we’ll plan a special weekend and go this weekend.’ Now we’re lucky to know what we were going to show the Monday of the weekend we’re supposed to be showing.”
Hall said part of the problem in more reliably booking movies in advance is the theater’s size and other factors.
“We’re not a ‘first run’ theater,” she said.
The fact that the theater has only one screen and seats 120 is a limiting factor as far as movie booking agents are concerned, Hall said, adding that the situation tends to create a vicious cycle because the third consideration for movie bookers is average attendance.
“And so when we get into a time where our attendance keeps going down, then that just kind of starts snowballing,” she said. So then we get pushed further down the line, and it’s just kind of a cause and effect.”
Another part of the catch 22 the theater faces is created by booking requirements that set the minimum price for a renting a film at $300, meaning that if only a handful people show up the theater is going to lose money. To complicate matters, once enough tickets are sold to equal the $300, the studio takes a percentage of every ticket sold beyond that.
“People wonder why you go to a movie theater and popcorn is $10,” Hall said. “That’s because you’re giving up 80 to 90 percent of your box office in a first-run theater and you’re paying a lot of employees. It’s got to come from somewhere.”
Faithful volunteers
At that point Collingham was quick to say, “That’s why we are so very appreciative of the community and all the volunteerism that they have done over the years. I mean, we have volunteers that run the concessions and it’s helped us out. We don’t have that employee overhead. We couldn’t run this theater without the volunteers.”
“Every weekend, there’s a new group that volunteers every day of every weekend,” Dyer said. “And then that repeats the next month.”
Dyer said there are currently 15 groups signed up to take shifts each month and some groups only work when there’s a fifth weekend day in a month. She said the groups usually range in size from three to five or more depending on the age of the volunteers. She said with 4-H groups and other organizations made up mostly of kids, the number that volunteers for a show might be higher.
The volunteers are “paid” through free movie tickets and popcorn, however, only four passes are given out per group. Hall said on top of the immediate perks they receive from volunteering, the younger volunteers also gain valuable work experience.
“I don’t know how many kids have learned customer service and counting back change behind that counter, but it’s a lot,” Hall said.
The women said the students sometimes help with the theater’s technology as well, such as programming iPads that are used. However, they said one student pranked them by reprogramming the device to show a $32 million sale.