The Fight for Attention Intensifies on Small Screens - and Big Ones

There are only so many places at which consumer attention intersects with sellers ability to get in their faces. Smartphone screens are the battleground of choice these days because of their ubiquity and our obsessive fascination with whatever appears on them.

But as you move up the screen size scale, the battle is also intensifying even as the likelihood of effective interaction decreases. Tablets, laptops - and the services providing information aggregated on them are all battling in ways both subtle and brazen to own your eyeballs.

A new front in that battle has opened at your local multiplex cinema. The cause of the conflict is the time devoted to trailers, the filmed 'coming attractions' that both titillate and annoy movie goers as they wait for film they paid to see.

The big movie studios want more trailers added to the already lengthy roll of previews movie fans are required to sit through. Some of the wait times can be as long as 15 or 20 minutes. Theater owners are faced with a growing chorus of complaints from customers and are understandably about losing anymore business to the home theater market.

They are also concerned about losing their share of the increasing preview time devoted to paid advertisements. Europeans and people in other regions have long been accustomed to this, but it is a relatively new phenomena in the US - and a potentially significant source of revenue for theater owners who audience now has many other options.

In the long term the question will be to what degree the owners and studios can share. But like phone, computer or tablet makers and content providers, there is a finite amount of time and space available so who gets it is an issue of serious financial importance. JL

Ben Fritz reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Coming soon to a theater near you: the latest feud between Hollywood studios and cinema operators.

The National Association of Theatre Owners, an industry trade group, on Monday issued new guidelines for movie previews, or "trailers," limiting them to two minutes in length and suggesting they appear no more than five months before a movie is to premiere.

The trade group said overly lengthy trailers can be less effective, particularly when they promote movies that won't come out for many months.

The movie studios have a more cynical view, with many suspecting the guidelines are a way to set aside more time for paid ads that run before the trailers. Tighter restrictions could also push studios to pay for exact trailer placement, an increasingly common practice.

Studio executives said the guidelines would make it too difficult for them to promote their biggest features, which are often marketed as much as a year in advance. Studios like to run trailers for summer superhero movies, for instance, with other superhero movies that might play close to Christmas or even the prior summer.

"When you make big investments in movies, there's a long-term marketing process to build anticipation of an event," said a senior executive at one major studio. "These guidelines undermine that."

Trailers are considered the second-most-effective way to interest consumers in coming movies, after television commercials. But long trailers have been a source of complaints among some moviegoers, particularly coming on top of the ads for other products that increasingly run in front of films.

The new guidelines don't place limits on the number of trailers that can run before a movie, which have increased at many locations to six or seven, from three or four a decade ago.

Previously, under rules set by the Motion Picture Association of America, most trailers were limited to 2½ minutes, with no restriction on when they could run. Each studio would be allowed two exceptions a year to the new guidelines, with the trade group, known as NATO, acting as a clearinghouse for such requests.

Studios plan to pressure theaters to ignore the group's guidelines. "We'll deal with each exhibitor on an individual basis," said Dan Fellman, president of domestic distribution for Time Warner Inc.  TWX in Your Value Your Change Short position 's Warner Bros. "We're partners on this and we'll work it out."

A spokesman for AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., the nation's second-largest exhibitor, said his company would address its trailer policies "directly with studios." Regal Entertainment Group and Cinemark Holdings Inc.,  CNK in Your Value Your Change Short position the first- and third-largest theater chains, didn't respond to requests for comment.

Despite their common interest in increasing box office revenue, studios and theater chains have a history of conflict, particularly over the theatrical release "window," or amount of time after a movie debuts on the big screen before it is available to watch at home. Many studios want to shorten it, a change that exhibitors fiercely oppose.

Some studios now pay theater chains, either in annual deals or on a one-off basis, to ensure that their trailers play when and where they want. Those studios are likely to be particularly upset at any new restrictions placed on their trailers.

The organization has been considering new trailer policies since last April. Amid those discussions, it considered forbidding them from running more than 90 days before a film's debut, but decided to expand that time frame after receiving feedback from studios, said two people involved in the planning.

The changes come as studios are increasingly using the Internet to play trailers—a medium that some in Hollywood were noting on Monday comes with virtually no restrictions.

The changes were made by NATO's executive board, which has 17 members, including representatives of the eight largest chains, measured by screen count.