Cinema Annual Round-Up 1998
Revenue
Although official Advertising Association (AA) revenue figures have not yet been released, the industry’s revenue is expected to be up by 10% on last year to £97 million, according to Cinema Advertising Association (CAA) estimates. This compares to a 1998 growth for the UK ad industry as a whole of about 5% – official Advertising Association figures are not released until June.
Cinema display advertising is expected to account for 1.1% of all adspend in 1998. This compares to the industry’s 1% share in 1997. Revenue forecasts from the AA and Zenith Media predict that cinema will continue to grow strongly despite an economic slowdown.
Revenue and admissions are split across the two sales companies, Carlton Screen Advertising (CSA) and Pearl & Dean, approximately 70:30 in Carlton’s favour. Last year CSA screens took a 69.3% share of cinema admissions; Pearl & Dean screens picked up the remainder.
The industry is selling itself to advertisers on the back of its strong coverage: 92% of the population in Britain are now within 20 minutes drive of a cinema. Across all cinemas, 2,638 screens now carry advertising.
Admissions
1998 was the year that Titantic took the box office by storm. Grossing £69 million, the disaster-romantic-epic beat its nearest competitor for the top place, Doctor Dolittle, by £49.2 million. Titanic was released on 23 January and continued to give a big impact on admissions through to February giving that month an admissions figure of 15.13 million – a 49.5% increase year on year.
Admissions remained steady during March and April but took a drop in May to 8.95 million. March’s films included Good Will Hunting and Jackie Brown and among the pick of April’s films were Scream 2 and Mouse Hunt.
World Cup Fever hit us in June and had a big effect on cinema-goers in the UK: figures only reached 6.79 million, falling by 19.2% on June 1997. Admissions rose again in July, when England were knocked out and people ventured back to the cinema, contributing to the rise in admissions to 9.86 million.
Only in December did admissions fall down again, the Christmas films failed to pull in good audiences: even the old favourite, It’s A Wonderful Life couldn’t help. Other films released in the festive season included The Mask Of Zorro, There’s Something About Mary and the remake of The Parent Trap.
Looking back over the year only four months (January, February, April and November) had increases year on year. Surprisingly December was in fact the month that had the biggest drop year on year falling by 26.9% to 8.86 million from 12.13 million. However, cinema claims to be the only medium currently growing its audience base: CAVIAR research shows that there is an 11% increase in the number of individuals who ever go to the cinema to 83%. Other media’s audiences are either stable or in decline, according to Carlton Screen Advertising.
Some of the top grossing films of the year were Saving Private Ryan (17.9m), Armageddon (16.5m) and Godzilla (16.0m). These were positioned 3rd, 4th and 5th respectively. Despite the help of Titanic and other high grossing films, total monthly admissions for 1998 were 135.21 million which was 2.7% down on the year of 1997.
Last year’s National Cinema Day did not prove be as popular as 1997, probably due to the fact that the World Cup was in full swing. Only 850,000 people took part on Sunday 7 June, down from 1.4 million the previous year. McDonald’s sponsored the event which saw cinema tickets prices reduced to half price for one day.
A Television Round-Up for 1998 is available to subscriber in the Television feature list. A summary of last year’s news events is availble by clicking A Look Back At 1998….