Media Watch

Most movies no longer advertise in Cape Cod Times

60 percent of our local movie screens missing from paper for a month now
The last Regal Cinema ad ran in Cape Cod Times on May 31

By Walter Brooks and staff

If you’re looking for show times at any of Cape Cod’s thirty movie screens owned by Regal Cinemas, don’t bother picking up the print edition of the Cape Cod Times because you won’t find them there any longer.  The last Regal Cinema ad ran in the local daily print edition on May 31^st. 

There are about fifty Cape movie screens listed on our free movie listing area here. Thirty of those screens are owned by Regal Cinemas of  Knoxville, TN which has a dozen locations in Massachusetts with half of them here on Cape Cod.

Perhaps the Harwich Lighthouse Cinema's first feature will be "The Fall of the House of Stewart."

I spoke with their marketing department and was told that it is now an industry trend to drop ads from the old media in favor of the internet which offers as good or better returns for less cost.

And Regal needs to save money because the company reported that total revenues for the first quarter ending March 31, 2011 were $570.9 million compared to total revenues of $719.8 million for the first quarter ended April 1, 2010. Net income (loss) attributable to controlling interest was $23.6 million in the first quarter of 2011 compared to $16.5 million in the first quarter of 2010. See the complete press release here.

Bad press for CC Times owner

Rupert Murdoch owns our local daily, and the Aussie tabloid publisher is engaged in the despicable habit of hacking dead children's phone records for news stories.
   The NY Times today reports: Boycott Targets Tabloid's Advertisers, and The Murdoch Style plus Murdoch hacking crisis deepens with war dead outcry in Reuters. Now advertisers are beginning to boycott his newspapers.

Is the sale of Regal's East Harwich cinemas in jeopardy?

Regal is also in the process of selling theater properties like the 6-screen location on Route 137 in Harwich which is under contract with the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School, although that sale appears increasingly at risk due to the school's recent bad publicity and unionizing which tends to scare off investors.

The school had looked into launching a $2 million fundraising campaign to finance the sale. When asked about the status of the campaign, Acting Director of the Lighthouse Charter School Paul Niles replied, "While we did undergo a study designed to help us explore issues related to a capital campaign, we have not launched a campaign. This study helped us to explore issues of capacity and the kinds of infrastructure necessary to carry out a campaign. It is possible that we will choose to conduct a campaign sometime in the future.". We are told the purchase and sale agreement with Regal will expire before long.