Mark Cuban notes that the National Association of Theatre Owners has issues with the simultaneous release of Bubble in multiple distribution channels, and discussion on Fresh Air with Terry Gross mentioned that attendance at movie theaters is down. The drop in attendance is easily explained, even without recourse to quality-of-life costs such as incompetent staff, dirty floors, dirty washrooms, and peeling wallpaper. I need to graph the supporting data, but the graph should be obvious to Econ101 students: prices go up; demand goes down.
Graphs: Attendance as a percentage of the United States population graphed against average prices, in 2004 dollars (calculated using this inflation calculator), the same but unadjusted for inflation, and the un-normalized graph. I have included a curve for the screens available.
