LAS VEGAS - The National Association of Theatre Owners is considering asking the Federal Communications Commission to lift the ban on jamming cell phones in movie theatres. Faced with falling attendances at the movie theatres, owners are looking to remove the menace of cell phones going off in the middle of a movie.
"I don't know what's going on with consumers that they have to talk on phones in the middle of theaters," John Fithian, the president of the Association told delegates at the ShoWest conference in Las Vegas.
He added that theatres were trying a number of ways to silence these phones from conducting periodic sweeps by ushers to playing funny movies asking for cell phones to be shut off. "We will actually petition the Federal Communications (Commission) to remove the block on jamming cell phones," Fithian said.
But federal laws as well as FCC rules ban the use of cell phone jammers. Meanwhile, the ShoWest conference also debated on ways to draw back audiences to theatres. "Everyone knows how to sum up box office in 2005. It was down," Dan Glickman, the Chief Executive of Motion Picture Association of America said. "This is not breaking news. What is important in 2006 is how we respond to the changing marketplace."
He added that they were considering a campaign on lines of Got Milk? campaign to draw back consumers. "Those campaigns were done because the market sales and volumes of individual consumer brands were falling, and this reversed the trend," Glickman said. Most of the delegates blamed Hollywood for making bad movies for the falling attendances.
