Mise au Point (Aug 2012)
Electronic delivery of alternative contents in cinemas before the digital era: the case of theater television in the US exhibition market in the 1940s and 1950s
Abstract
In the early 1950s, 20th Century-Fox acquired the rights to a Swiss television theater system called Eidophor which the company promoted as creating a “new field of operation-a field of limitless opportunity” for cinema exhibitors. The idea was to pipe “special events” (Broadway musical hits, operas, concerts, sports and films) to subscribing theaters around the country “giving perfectly sharp, technically faultless pictures and flawless sound reproduction”. In 1952, the number of theater television transmissions reached 300, five of which were organized nationally. On december, the opera Carmen was telecasted from the Metropolitan Opera in New York to 31 theaters in 26 cities. The 1954 opening night gala was sent to an even larger network. Alternative content programming, which was first seen as a regular component of the movie theater experience in the US, evolved into an event driven theatrical television pattern. Theaters (mostly major theater circuits) would install equipment for events that justified the expense. The digital projection rollout in theaters today in the US and worldwide call for revisiting and reconsidering alternative content programming strategies of the 1950s and 20th Century-Fox’s vision of the possibilities of electronic delivery for motion picture exhibition. This paper aims to shed more light in one of the less known chapters of the history of motion picture presentation in the US, whose renewed interest today is closely linked to the digital media revolution. As the exhibition market transitions to digital delivery, the deployment of alternative contents, including gaming, sporting events and concerts, is converting the cinema screen into a multimedia center, a giant high definition television screen. How far is this idea from the theater television concept of the 1950s which Spyros Skouras qualified as “the greatest stimulant our industry has had since the advent of sound” ?
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