Cinema Exhibitor's Association Tackles Alternative Content

http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/node/1963

Submitted by Nick Dager on Tue, 09/14/2010 - 17:14.

By Melissa Keeping

“Despite the hurdles, Alternative Content is definitely growing,” was how Christine Costello summed up the positive mood at the CEA’s Alternative Content Conference in Manchester this week. There are undoubtedly challenges to overcome, but every business idea faces obstacles and this is no different.  Digital deployment in Europe has seen unprecedented increases in the last 12 months, with a 192 percent jump and at last count, 4580 screens now up and running, according to Screen Digest. France is the clear leader, followed by the UK with Germany and Italy catching up behind.

Any alternative content project is 100 percent reliant on marketing for its success, and when you only have one or two screenings the marketing budget will need to be necessarily small, but focused and creative.  Then you have the protracted business of acquiring rights, which can take between 12-18 months on average; you will be competing with other providers to access those rights, which costs money, takes time and most of all, good contacts.

But get all these ingredients right, and you have a very marketable product on your hands and exhibitors like Mark Dobson were waxing lyrical about the audience reaction.  Mark runs the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle, and reported that having initially been extremely skeptical about the potential of alternative content, is now verging on the evangelical, such are the results at his small independent cinema, citing a marked rise in the number of new customers who would normally stay well away, turned off by mainstream studio fare.

He reported that this new, affluent audience not only paid more per ticket, they were willing to pay up front for a whole season of opera, and paid more while they were there in concessions. The turnout was higher than on average and the audiences are clamoring for more too.  Building on that new audience is key to sustaining interest and ultimately, revenue.

The usual suspects were discussed at length: opera, theatre, ballet, sport, gaming etc.  Concerts are way ahead in the popularity stakes with established forms of AC are clearly worth the effort and cost involved in staging them, but their reach is limited, aimed at the 18-34 age group primarily.  Surprisingly, kids’ TV shows turned into live performances, such as Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder garnered a 70 percent occupancy rate, higher than any of the other rock/pop, sport or comedy events staged by the Vue Entertainment cinema chain this year.  Opportunities for merchandising at the event are enormous, adding more value to the event.

Other areas that got exhibitors, distributors and content providers excited were education in the form of university lectures, live surgery, classic movies remastered in 3D, series of documentaries and soap opera finales, comedy, talks, X-Factor Final Eurovision Song Contest (both with interactive voting), away games for football, golf, horse-racing, boxing and lesser-known sports in the UK such as NBA, pro-wrestling etc.  Again, creative though these ideas are, finding a way to turn them into revenue streams remains the real challenge here.

Everyone sobered up when conversation turned to the fracas of the World Cup this summer, and agreed lessons had been learned.  The worry is that with the Olympics only two years away and the next World Cup on the horizon, will deployment, licensing, distribution, (not to mention the power games being played by TV companies, rights holders and FIFA,) be any more settled next time round? Few were willing to bet much at this point.

Alternative Content’s biggest problem is it is defined only by what it is not.  It is an alternative to the mainstream and as such, is suffering from an identity crisis.  It needs a name that stands alone, that identifies it for what it is.  "Additional Programming" is inadequate. "Alternative Content" is too vague, too reliant on its opposite.  As a result, marketing Alternative Content currently is fraught with difficulty and Elizabeth Draper from Arts Alliance Media explained how often she is shunted from Cinema Listings to About Town to Classical Music when trying to place her PR & Marketing in the press. 

“Alternative Content isn’t film, it isn’t theatre. It’s something else.”  Crucially, until this hurdle is overcome, alternative content will remain in the margins, along with its box office.