Question: In relation to the media area you have studied, discuss the ways audience consumption has changed over time.
Media Area: Film
Everybody watches movies in their own way. Some people watch it the old fashioned way through movie theaters. I like to watch movies at home. Due to new technologies, there are so many popular, different, and new ways to consume films. The three ways that most people have watched films over time are through movie theaters, DVDs, and digital services.
Watching films at movie theaters has been around since 1905. While it is very old it has stayed around for a long time. This is mostly due to the fact that going to the movies is the only way to see the movie right when it comes out. I believe that if streaming services got movies as fast as movie theaters did then everybody would just watch the movie at home. In the 1940s the percentage of the US that went to the movie theater on a weekly basis is approximately 80%. The percentage of people who watch movies in the theater in 2018 is 13%. We can see here that through about a 70 year period the percentage of people who attend movie theaters dropped about 67%. This is due to the technological advances made in film consumption. Since there are newer, better, and easier ways to watch movies people go to the theaters less and less. We can see this again by an even more recent statistic. In 2002 approximately 1.5 billion tickets were sold in the US and Canada. Compared to in 2019 where only 1.2 billion tickets were sold in the US and Canada. With an ever-increasing population, you would expect that number to go up, but it doesn’t due to better alternatives to movie theaters. What should be taken from all of this information is that because of new technologies more and more people are straying away from movie theaters.
The first ways of home movies were made available in the US starting in the ’80s. At this time it was mostly VHS or video home system that was being distributed. In 1997 the DVD player and discs became available and people saw how much better it is than VHS. In 2003 the DVD made VHS almost obsolete. A notable company that saw the ability to make money off of video rental was Blockbuster. They first emerged in 1985 around when VHS first came out and the founder, David Cook, saw an ability to make money off of renting videos and he used his money to invest in a business that would be very successful for a long time. We can see that once the DVD became famous in 2003, by 2004 blockbuster peaked as a company with over 9,000 stores in the US. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end and the business announced that they were closing down in 2010. This happened due to the number of competitors in the streaming service world. People realized that it is easier for them to watch the movie from home instead of having to go out and buy it. One DVD service that is still around today is Redbox. Redbox acts as a sort of movie vending machine. It is very simple, you select a movie, put in your money, then the machine gives you the movie, easy as that. This type of service is very successful because of its convenience. These DVD services fell behind in the movie industry due to new technologies taking over the industry.
The new technologies talked about above include online streaming services, illegal downloading, and pretty much anything that isn’t disc-based. Most people love digital movie services due to the fact that this is the easiest way to watch a movie. As of 2018, a total of 54% of people enjoy watching a movie at their home rather than at a movie theater. While only 13% of people prefer watching a movie at the movie theater. Online streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, and Disney+ are very famous and most people use at least one of them. All that’s needed is a monthly subscription and you have access to hundreds of different movies and TV shows. Another way people watch movies these days is through illegal downloading or pirating movies. I myself have even watched movies this way. If a movie looks interesting, and it is not in theaters anymore but not on streaming services yet, I try and find it online for free. Today’s technology has made it very easy for almost anyone to access any movie you want for free. An example of how streaming services are making DVD obsolete is from a case study done on Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2. The movie was released onto streaming services like amazon video before it was released on DVD. In another case study done on Spiderman: Homecoming while the movie was released in theaters the movie was also released to Xfinity Stream. This shows that the digital services are not only competing with DVD but even with the actual movie theaters. In an additional case study done on The Lego Movie Part 2, on black Friday, Warner Bros. released the first Lego Movie on YouTube in its entirety for one day only, with a trailer for The Lego Movie 2. This shows that digital services are also being used not only to distribute media but also to advertise for it. Overall, technology has made way for digital services and these services have made it easy for almost anyone to watch their favorite movie anywhere.
All in all, the different ways to watch movies over time have evolved from only going to the theaters now to an extremely wide variety of options. In my opinion, watching a movie at home on streaming services is the easiest way to do it. However, my favorite way to watch a movie is to go to the theaters because it is the most fun. Media consumption has changed over time and will change in the future, only time will tell what those changes will bring.
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