Did copyright pirates kill the cinemas?
Business Editorial...
Stabroek News
July 9, 2004
In last week's edition we reported on a cinema owner who was selling out his 16 cinemas and blaming their demise on the prevalence of bootlegged movies.
Indeed, pirated DVDs of the latest Indian movies play every day on local TV sometimes before a film has even been released at a local cinema. Several lawsuits have been filed but the practice continues.
Meanwhile one popular record bar on Regent St sells DVDs of popular films such as Torque and other action flicks that are clearly pirated, and is doing a great business. These are not being sold 'hush hush' under the counter but very openly and are even advertised. The same goes for CDs. But as anyone who has bought a burnt copy knows, the quality just does not last. After a few spins, the tracks start skipping and they become an annoyance.
Guyana is not the only country where what is plain and simple theft goes on. Even in the United States, pirated DVDs of varying levels of quality are sold on the street in what is a huge business.
But even with pirated films readily available, the average American goes to the cinema 5.4 times a year and in 2002 total box office receipts reached US$9.3B, up by 10% from 2001.
Contrast this to Guyana, where cinema screens are one by one going dark and the old folks wax nostalgic for the good old days when the opening of a movie was a news event. Only two months ago, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which broke box office records around the world barely attracted a few hundred customers in what is a deeply religious country.
So what has gone wrong? Is it really the bootlegging video stores and TV stations - the copyright pirates of the Caribbean? Maybe they have had some effect. But the more likely culprits are the cinema owners themselves who have failed to respond to the changing habits of the consumer. Just as in the US, there has been a gradual shift of the population out of Georgetown and into the suburbs. The recent census results show that between 1991 and 2002, the population of the city proper (Georgetown) actually declined by 14,663 to reach 34,179. Many of those settled in the suburbs or along the East Coast and East Bank and might be categorised as belonging to a middle class with some disposable income. Most importantly they drive and some in the services sector have already recognised this development. Fast food outlets offer drive-thru windows and Gafoor's Houston Complex (see article on the front page)caters for customers with cars.
But imagine if a family wants to go to one of the major cinemas in town that are still open. The show starts at 7.30 pm and ends at 11 pm. The only question going through their minds is where are they going to find secure parking? The answer is nowhere. They face any number of threats from having their lights or mirrors stolen to actually getting mugged. And anyone who has been into these cinemas in recent years knows that the conditions are, to say the least, appalling. Ripped, uncomfortable seats, terrible acoustics, poor visuals and then there are the rats running under your feet.
Consider instead a US or even a Trinidad cinema, air-conditioned, with a choice of maybe five or six films with different start times, surround sound, comfortable seats, adequate and safe parking, clean washrooms and polite service. The same movies are playing but it is simply the presentation that makes the difference.
Guyanese are very sociable people. They love to go out to see and be seen. Any event, be it a fashion show or a classical concert, is often fully subscribed. Many would be clamouring to go to a modern cinema with family or friends even with or without a bootlegged copy available. It is not piracy that killed the cinemas but the owners' own failure to heed the key business maxim of adapting to changing customer preferences. Let us hope that one day an entrepreneur will come along and give movie lovers what they want.