AMC Theatres Announces Major Change Affected All Moviegoers
AMC Theatres' CEO Adam Aron announced during an earnings call on Monday that the company would be cutting down on its pre-show marketing.
“It’s not that there’s been a change of heart...but we also know that some other consumers think the package has gone too long, and we’re trying to find a happy medium," Aron said.
After ACM and National CineMedia, an advertising company, reached a deal, AMC customers were alerted that they could expect their movie to begin up to 30 minutes after the listed showtime.
“While AMC was initially reluctant to bring this to our theaters, our competitors have fully participated for more than five years without any direct impact to their attendance. This is a strong indication that this NCM pre-show initiative does not negatively influence moviegoing habits," the theater chain announced at the time. "We were forgoing tens of millions of dollars that our competitors were taking."
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In order to balance out the extended wait times, Aron announced, “We’re not cutting back the agreement that we put in place with National CineMedia that is contractual for many years to come."
Instead the CEO stated they would be cutting down their in-house ads by two to three minutes. Additionally, they would pick up another two to three minutes by eliminating one trailer per film.
“We knew that when we made the NCM deal, we might have to make a tradeoff,” Aron said. “If we’re adding six minutes in NCM ad time, we would have to reduce a trailer or cut down some of our own marketing fluff in advance of the feature film.”
Days prior to Aron's announcement, AMC walked out a previous decision to run a "platinum spot" in their pre-show programming.