New Media Goes to the Movies: Digitizing the Theatrical Audience Published in Television & New Media, pp. 1-21, 2019, DOI: 10.1177/1527476429863131 Blake Hallinan1 and C.J. Reynolds2 Abstract Movie theaters typically appear adjacent to discussions of new media. Although there has been work on digital cinema, we shift the focus from the digitization of the medium to the digitization of the theatrical audience and analyze the movie theater as new media. To do so, we look at the historical and contemporary strategies for digitizing the theatrical audience of a prominent theater chain. We identify common media of digitization, including credit cards, computerized point-of-sale systems, and loyalty programs. The origins of these techniques and imperatives trace back to the 1970s and 1980s, even as they take on new forms today. We then analyze the industrial logics of audience digitization and emergent communication and data collection methods. Finally, we analyze the movie theater as a platform, showing both the relevance of movie theaters and the challenges their inclusion as an object of study poses for contemporary platform studies. Introduction In 1999, Variety published an article about the changes coming to theatrical distribution and exhibition with the dawn of a new “Digital Era,” which began with a speculative account of what the industry would look like in five years’ time: Using his computer keyboard and mouse, the president of top U.S. theater chain Regal/Loews-AMC books the upcoming weekend’s films into his circuit’s theaters. As he clicks on the titles (“Austin Powers 4: You Only Shag Twice,” “The Matrix III” and MGM’s long-awaited “Supernova”) the films begin downloading via satellite to the 1 University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, USA 2 Independent Scholar Corresponding Author: Blake Hallinan, University of Colorado Boulder, Hellems 96 UCB 270, Boulder, CO 80303, USA Email:
[email protected] 2 Television & New Media 00(0) circuit’s digital megaplexes around the globe.