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A U.S. State Senator has introduced a bill to force cinemas to tell viewers how long the ads are before movies - here is why it makes sense (and why it doesn't)
Turning every movie into a three hour outing isn't reasonably for a lot of people, though the law and cinema chains still need work to fix the problem.
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Going to the movies has become a massive time commitment. Even once we get there, there are twenty minutes of ads, then the trailers, and then more ads before what could easily be a two-and-a-half-hour movie. Before you know it, you’re three hours into the experience wondering where your day has gone, which is too much for many people. To combat this, a State Senator from Connecticut is introducing a bill that would require theaters to tell ticketholders exactly what time the movie would start, allowing them to skip the ads.
While there are obvious shortcomings in this approach – cinema profits are pretty much dependent on those ads to stay in business – this is a potential solution to a problem that could put people off going in the first place. Knowing how much of the preamble they’re able to skip is an obvious win for consumers, even if it makes things slightly more difficult for advertisers and cinema chains. Many people intentionally show up late to a screening just so they can avoid at least some of the pre-show ads, so this would just formalize that practice a bit more.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to skip the trailers. I love seeing trailers for upcoming movies that get me hyped for them and nothing beats seeing them on the big screen. Heck, I’ve gone to movies I didn’t particularly want to see just because I wanted to see the trailer for upcoming movies. (This was before every trailer got a debut on YouTube.) However, with the internet basically inflicting every trailer for every movie on me whenever I’m on social media, the odds of me seeing a trailer for the first time in the cinema are increasingly low.
This bill would make going to the cinema more convenient and give everyone more flexibility for how much time they want to sink into seeing a movie, though it probably needs to be approached from another angle to work for both movie-goers and theater owners. Cinemas would be forced to either limit the number of trailers or ads ahead of a movie or, the better solution, find a new way to bring in the ad revenue that helps them keep their doors open. However, I’m not going to begrudge a lawmaker for introducing a bill that attempts to solve a problem rather than cause one.
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