Loews gets honest about movie start-times As you’re sitting in the movie theater waiting for the actual movie to start, maybe it’s crossed your mind that it would be great if you could fast forward through the ads and at least some of the trailers. Well, Loews Cineplex is finally doing something better, by starting to remind moviegoers in its advertising that the movie will actually start 10 to 15 minutes after the traditionally-publicized start-time which, of course, includes the commercials and trailers. The move follows customer complaints. The only thing that’s truly surprising about this development is that according to this story in the New York Daily News, the idea is first being tested in two theaters in Connecticut before rolling out nationally in June. We ask: what’s there to test?  —Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

May 4, 2005 | Permalink

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Regardless of what time the movie actually starts, you have to arrive to the theater half an hour before in order to get a seat, so what's the difference? You still have to sit through the ads! The real reason they're doing this is that the New York City Council has proposed legislation before it that would require the theater companies to do this anyway. Whatever happened to the movie theater companies experimenting with reserved seating? If you had a guaranteed seat, then you could skip the ads -- I guess they caught on!

Posted by: CopyVet | May 4, 2005 5:51:03 PM

This got Loews a nice publicity pop. Doesn't seem revolutionary to me. The Regal Cinemedia "20" has always been back-timed to the start of the program (though you don't avoid increasingly annoying trailers, with the cookie-cutter formula, hyper-whooshing and jail-door-slamming audio-effects by arriving at 8 for an 8 o'clock show). The result is that sponsors of the "20" might be mortified to see how few people are volunteering to watch commercials because of Regal's honest-start-time policy.

Posted by: Greg Solman | May 6, 2005 4:47:51 PM

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