film

This page is under development. It considers audience research regarding film, which encompasses questions of whether films are being watched, who is watching those films and - more ambitiously - why they are being watched.

It covers -

• introduction
• the box office
• attitudes
• editors and authors
• studies

     studies

For a historical perspective see in particular Richard Butsch's The Making of American Audiences: From Stage to Television, 1750-1990 (New York: Cambridge Uni Press 2000), American Movie Audiences: From the Turn of the Century to the Early Sound Era (London: BFI 1999) and Hollywood Spectatorship: Changing Perceptions of Cinema Audiences (London: BFI 2001) edited by Melvyn Stokes & Richard Maltby, The Last Picture Show? Britain's Changing Film Audiences (London: BFI 1987) by David Docherty, David Morrison & Michael Tracey and BA Austin's Immediate Seating - A Look at Movie Audiences (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing 1988). Russell Neuman's perceptive The Future of the Mass Audience (New York: Cambridge Uni Press 1991) is of broader interest.

Questions of basic box office statistics and industry accounting have always been controversial. One point of reference is John Izod's Hollywood and the Box Office, 1895-1986 (New York: Columbia Uni Press 1988).

     next page  (broadcast)