By Lee Pfeiffer
One of the traditional pleasures for movie fans is to scan newspapers to peruse ads for the latest movies and to search listings for show times at their local theaters. Now both practices may become a thing of the past. Movie theater chains in America have severely cut back on marketing campaigns in the print press in order to focus on more cost-efficient web-based advertising. Many newspapers charge theater chains to run movie show times in their listings and some chains are now eliminating those fees by putting the information only on movie-related web sites. The strategy seems short-sighted. Scanning newspapers for show times is an American tradition - it provides a quick way to compare what is playing at all local theaters. The brain trust behind the cut-backs obviously thinks that absolutely everyone in the nation is sitting in front of a device that can connect them on-line if they feel a spontaneous impulse to go to the movies. The deprivation of the marketing dollars, though minimal, is yet another blow to the nation's suffering newspaper industries - and it doesn't stop there. The real dollars are spent on display ads - and even a cursory look at major newspapers show that the era of lavish print marketing campaigns is over, probably for good. For more
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