Where Have All of the Theaters Gone?

Growing up in my hometown of Augusta, GA, during the 1960s and '70s, I remember there being nine movie theatres. Three downtown (one of which showed soft-core porn), two in the suburbs, and four drive-ins. The nearest drive-in is now 60 miles away in Monetta, SC, none of the three downtown functions as a movie house now, and the two in the suburbs are gone. All nine went under. In their places we now have three, all of them in the suburbs. Two of them are first run houses and the other a subsequent run house. Granted, the two first-runs have multiple screens and only one from my childhood had more than one screen and then just two. In addition, four other theaters have opened and closed in my lifetime. That gives Augusta a loss of thirteen theaters over the last 40-odd years. Quite a difference from the golden age of Hollywood. In 1941 there were approximately 17000 theaters in America in 8500 cities with 10.5 million seats. There were 49 cities with a population of  200,000 and up and they contained 20% of all theaters, one-third of all seats, and generated two-thirds of all ticket sales. Today there are less than 6000 theaters remaining. The factors of general television, the supreme court decision forcing the studios to divest themselves of their theater chains (at one time Paramount Studios alone owned over 1200 theatres) and the resulting reduction in new movies being made, home video (videotape and DVDs), pay television and new technology allowing us to watch movies on our computers have all done their part in this. Will we see a further reduction? I don't think so. I think the market has shaken itself out enough to where we are at a static situation. Simply put, we will see very few new theaters but also very few going out of business. People still need date nights and cheap entertainment and for the movie geeks there is no substitute for the theater experience.