movies

Consolidation fucked them. Optimal economics through the 90s meant maximized seating per screen, and one ticketing / concession apparatus for as many screens as possible. If the theater was in the mall and you were already at the mall, this worked out perfectly. Aaand then everyone bought a big flat television right as Netflix-as-DVD-rental and Netflix-as-streaming-service made home viewing basically effortless... and online shopping finally worked. By 2015 you'd go to a dead mall to sit in a half-empty theater and balk at prices that would nowadays seem quaint.

Small theaters should be doing okay. But small theaters are mostly dead. Anything old was driven out by the push for growth, and anything new is some boutique horseshit that's somehow even more expensive.

You've turned the movie-going experience into an event, and people act accordingly. Even when movies were struggling against color television, going to the theater was still dirt cheap and down the street. It's no longer a convenient way to kill an evening. It's a commute to a distant box full of strangers, so you can see an overhyped entertainment product that'll be accessible from your couch in two months.