Thursday, May 05, 2005

Loews to stop lying about movie start-times

Boing Boing (blargticle)


Loews theatres is abandoning its deceptive practice of advertising movie start-times that were 10-20 minutes earlier than the actual show time, and then forcing the customers they suckered into turning up early to watch commercials, a captive audience.


People are treating the movies that are playing these ads like its a violation against their 'rights'. Sure I don't like them, and unless it's a movie preview I talk at normal level, often just making fun of the ad. But really if you already know that there will be previews, don't show up so early (or on time...or whatever). Is it really that hard?

If this is a problem, let’s get on TV channels for not starting their programming exactly on the hour.
Jeez.

2 comments:

hockeyfrog said...

People are catching onto the whole 2 cents of popcorn and 5 cents worth of butter trick that turns into $7 from us to buy popcorn. And don't get me started on the pop prices.

After having to watch the same ads and previews 12 times in a row (and ending up not getting paid for it grr), I noticed there are some commercials I didn't mind and some that irritated me beyond belief. The Altoids Sours commercial with the Altoidian Fruit Bat was hilarious, and the esuvee.com commercial was entertaining as well as educational (this is now being shown on regular television as well, esuvee championships?)... but commercials for Sprite with the little action figure guy and the coke commercial (which I realized.. ha! They're selling these at the concession stand as well) irritated me for some reason. Movie previews I don't mind so much, especially seeing the Madagascar preview 12 times. I reeeally want to see that movie.

Actually maybe now that I think about it... its just drink commericals in general, except for the Spy vs. Spy Mt. Dew commercials which are great... that are irritating. Where did we first see the Fanta commercials? Thats right, in a movie theatre.

Anyway, most movie theatres start the commercials and such at the movie "start" time or darn near it.

As Admiral Ackbar would say... ITS A TRAP! (www.itsatrap.net)

Anonymous said...

I have no problem wich ads starting a movie. The problem is the poor quality of the ads. Not the start time.