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84.  NEU 7 May 1930.
85.  NEP, 10 February 1931.
86.  NDG, 14 January 1932.
87.  NDG, 5 July 1932.
88.  NJ, 1 January 1938.
89.  Kichards, 1984, pp. 60-61.
90.  NDG, 30 March 1930.
91.  NDG, 31 March 1939.
92.  NER 4 April 1939.
93.  Hill, 1997, p. 538.
f
Part Four
Cinema Closures, Post-War Affluence and the Changing Meanings of Cinema and Television
t
f
Introduction
In the United States, during World War II, there was a boom in cinema attendance that I was followed by a rapid decline in cinema attendance in the immediate post-war period. ; In Britain the pattern was quite different. In 1946, cinema attendance reached 1,640 \ million, which meant that 'three-quarters of the population attended at least once a year, and one-third once a week or more'.1 This moment represented the peak in cinema attendance in Britain, and although it gradually declined thereafter, it was ten years before cinema figures declined significantly. When the decline came, however, it was dramatic. Between 1946 and 1956, the audience dropped from 1,640 million to 1,101 1 million - a loss of 500 million and nearly a third of attendances - but in the next four \ years alone the audience 'plummeted by another 600 million to 501 million'.2 Thus,  í within the fourteen years after 1946, cinema attendance had fallen by over two-thirds.
Between 1950 and 1968, thirty-eight cinemas were closed out of the seventy-two that had opened in the Nottingham area since 1910,3 and a smaller number closed between 1970 and 2000 (see the graph at the end of the chapter for details). Furthermore, the majority of the cinemas that, closed in the post-war period were in the suburbs, with only four suburban cinemas remaining open after 1968: the Savoy (still open today); the Sher^' wood Metropole (closed 1973); the Classic, Lenton Abbey (closed 1975); and the Byron;, Hucknell (still open). This meant that in the 1970s and 1980s, cinemagoing once againV, became a city-centre experience.
There were two main periods bf cinema closure: 1957-59 and 1968. Six cinemas closed in 1959 alone, and in 1968 another five were closed. According to the National Board of Trade statistics, 1957-59 was a particularly bad time for cinemas all over the country. Between 1957 and 1958, the number of cinemas fell from 4,194 to 3,996, a fall of 5 per cent but, during this same period, there was also a 17.5 per cent fall in admissions and gross box-office takings fell by 10.2 per cent. However, there were significant regional variations in the statistics. The London and South Eastern region suffered the least with only an 11.3 per cent decline in gross box-office takings, while the Northern region suffered the most with a 27 per cent decline. The North Midland region fared a bit better, and its takings fell by 17.6 per cent, which was close to the national average.4
The size of the cinema also affected the rate of decline. Larger cmemasdid better than smaller onesLthe takings of cinemas with less than 500 seats fell by 22.5 per cent whereas the fall for those cinemas with between 1,501 and 2,000 seats was only half as much at 10.4 per cent. However, the audiences for cinemas with more than 2,000 seats declined by 14.9 per cent, which suggests that there was a point at which size was no longer a virtue.5
Although many cinemas closed between 1957 and 1959, nationally the years between 1960 and 1962 were actually far worse. Between 1961 and 1962, the total number of
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cinemas declined by 11 per cent - twice as bad as the decline between 1957 and 1958. However, this was not the case m Nottingham where 1961-62 actually saw a fall in the number of closures. There were also differences between Nottingham and national figures in 1968: while Nottingham witnessed another spate of closures, nationally the number of cinemas closing levelled off.
Part Four will therefore be divided into four further chapters, the first of which will examine the reasons behind the dramatic decline in cinema attendance during the 1950s. While television has been blamed for cinema closure in contemporary research, Chap-/ ter 8 will demonstrate that, during the 1950s, television was only held responsible for / cinema's decline towards the end of the decade. Rather, there were several other reasons \ given by cinema owners for the closure of their cinemas during the decade, of which ( heavy taxation was the most prominent.
Chapter 9 will therefore consider the contextual factors related to the decline of cinemagoing in the period. In the process, it will examine the 'age of affluence' from 1955 onwards, and the ways in which this changed many people's leisure habits. For example, the political promotion of home ownership at this time meant that many made the home the focus of both financial investment and leisure activities. At the same time, however, the dramatic increase in car ownership also did much the same. As a result, people's conception of their 'local' area changed as they both spent more leisure time in the home and travelled further and further for their entertainment.
Chapter 10 then moves on to look at the development of television as a leisure activity. Although television was not initially intended to become a form of 'home cinema', tele-r vision did develop and change between the mid-1940s and the early 1970s and, by the end of this period, more films were watched on television than at the cinema. However, this process should not simply be seen as a competition between television and the činenia but as a far more complex process through which both media changed in relation
5-99 (5-year aggregates)   "
1945-9    1950-4    1955-9   1950-4    1965-9    197(M    1975-9    1980-4    1935-9    1990-4    1995-9
INTRODUCTION'                                                           '                                          133
to one another. For example, while television gradually integrated more and more filmst into its overall programme, the cinema gradually jettisoned more and more of the pro-]' ■ gramme and concentrated on the individual feature film. In addition, this chapter will; also examine the processes through which televisions were acquired by households as consumer items; the conflicts that they generated; and the -range of uses and meanings that they acquired within the home. '■
Finally, Chapter 11 will examine the changed meanings of cinema, and will demon-, strate that, while it was seen as a symbol of modernity in the 1930s, by_diej95ps^it had:! come to be seen as a ncjt_a]gjc_oJ^uhat-represente4 community andjxadition. In the; process, the chapter will look at press coverage on the closing of cinemas from the 1950s! onwards, and at our respondents' memories of cinemagoing. Finally, it will demonstrate-that the cinema and television are not straightforward rivals, but that each is associated with different activities and experiences. In other words, television is not simply a domestic replica of the activity of cinemagoing, but rather has very-different meanings and;!, functions precisely because of its location within the domestic realm rather than within I \ public places outside the home.
Notes
1.  Docherty, Morrison and Tracey, 1987, p. 4.
2.  Ibid., p. 15.
3.  This figure of seventy-two included those which were opened or were converted to full-time cinemas after 1910.
4.  Board of Trade Journal, 16 October 1959, p. 537. Nottingham was included in the North Midland region according to the Census 1951 England and Wales: General Report, London: HMSO, 1958, p. 224.
5.  Board of Trade Journal, 16 October 1959, pp. 536,538.
8
Contemporary Understandings of Cinema Closure
Accounting for Closure: Taxes, Levies and the Local Press
In 1962, John Spanos studied the dramatic decline in cinema attendance and concluded that it was television that was responsible. According to Spanos, there were three phases of decline. In the first, prior to 1955, the majority of television sets were owned by higher-income groups that were not a core cinema audience, and therefore it was the second phase, between 1955 and 1958, that was most decisive. During this phase, working-class families had begun to acquire television sets and he argues that not only were these families a core cinema audience, but that they also tended to have larger families and 'an age composition which led to high cinema scores'.1 In short, they had more family members aged between fifteen and twenty-four. In the third phase, however, he claims that the impact was much less severe. Although televisions were selling at roughly the same rate as that between 1955 and 1958, after 1958, the families that acquired these new sets not only tended to have smaller families, but also to have members that were older.
While competition from television has been a popular explanation for the decline of cinema in the post-war period, as we shall see, this explanation has been severely contested by current research. Moreover, within the period itself, it only emerged as an explanation relatively late in the day. From our analysis of local papers, it was clear that in the 1950s the decline of cinema was attributed to a number of factors, and that it was only at the very end of the decade that the blame shifted towards television. For most of the 1950s the main complaint was against the various taxes and levies placed upon cinema. In 1955, for example, the secretary of the Nottinghamshire and Derby Cinematograph Exhibitors' Association (CEA) was reported as saying that the main problem facing cinemas was the 'high rate of entertainment tax',2 while an article in the Guardian Journal (GJ) claimed that the entertainment tax was five times as high as it had been before the war.3 Certainly, for much of the 1950s, it was the entertainment tax which concerned most exhibitors, and they campaigned against it most vigorously. The reason for this can clearly be seen when one looks at the figures involved.
In the early 1950s, the industry was paying approximately 35 per cent of the gross box-office takings in entertainment tax. Although this had fallen by 1957, after its reduction by the government, it still stood at 29.9 per cent and at 18.7 per cent a year later in 1958.4 It was eventually abolished after intense campaigning, but not before it had effectively pushed up ticket prices. In June 1956, the average price of cinema seats in Nottingham was increased from around 3d to 5d, and the explanation for this rise was
CONTEMPORARY UNDERSTANDINGS OF CINEH'a CLOSURE                       135
the Chancellor's refusal to reduce the entertainment tax.5 This 60 per cent increase eroded the cinema industry's claims to being among the cheapest forms of entertainment, and it was particularly hard on the small, local cinemas whose main attraction was their cheapness. However, the removal of the tax did not help many cinemas. By that time, the cinemas that had most needed the reduction had already closed.
The entertainment tax was not the'only financial burden that was being imposed on the exhibitors, and there were two further financial demands. The first was the British Film Production Levy, which had started as a voluntary fund from box-office takings in the period of high entertainment tax. Although it was small compared to the entertainment tax, it was gradually increased as the entertainment tax was reduced. An article in the GJ, after the entertainment tax had been reduced to 30 per cent in 1957, noted that the amount paid to the Production Fund had increased from £2.5 million to between £3.5 and £5 million.6 Thus, although the reduction in tax would save cinemas approximately £6.5 million, the increased contribution to the British Film Production Fund meant that there was in fact only £5.25 million left over which had to be shared among 4,000 cinemas,7 and again this largely helped the larger cinemas with over 8,000 patrons a week which charged middling prices. The levy remained after the entertainment tax had been removed altogether and, in 1968, £4.2 million was still being paid to the fund.8
The 'windsor today, Hartley Road: a victim of taxation?
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The second financial demand was the Sunday Levy, although it received far less attention in the local press. After the war, the local prohibition on Sunday opening had ended, but local authorities were still able to impose a levy of their own choosing.pn venues that opened on the Sabbath. This levy was donated to charities and, in 1956, a letter to the GJ from the Nottingham and Derby Branch of the CEA explained that it affected cinemas in Nottingham particularly badly. It noted that the Watch Committee not only refused to set the levy at the minimum amount but had also collected over £30,000 that it was as yet unable to decide how to spend:
Last week, a national newspaper published a letter written by a local exhibitor, who states that he is prepared to sell his modem cinema for any industrial purpose. This man, like others, is being forced out of business by heavy Entertainment Tax. At the same time, he had also paid a few hundred pounds towards that £30,000.9
For the CEA, the committee's insistence on setting the levy at a higher rate than in other regions was 'an outstanding indication of legislation at its worst'.10
Other Threats: Age of the Cinema, Operating Costs and the Shortage of Films
Another reason given for cinema closure was that many of the buildings were now considered inadequate and out of date. While cinemas in the 1930s had been seen as places : of modernity and luxury, these same buildings had changed in meaning. During the war . and its aftermath there had been a ban on inessential building, which included cinemas, and by the 1950s many cinemas were either in disrepair or just seemed old and out of date. The age and discomfort of the Netherfield Cosy and the Palace at Bulwell were therefore cited as the reason for their closure in the same week in April 1955: 'Both these houses were built in the days of silent films. After showing pictures for 30 years they are now out of date by modern standards.'11 This reason was also used to explain the decline in theatre attendance. The chair of the trustees of the Nottingham Playhouse, for example, believed that the only way to get people away from the television was to give them theatres that they would want to go to regardless of the play that was being shown. He maintained that people wanted to go to exciting new theatres, and if Nottingham was to have a repertory theatre, it needed to have an adequate building.12 He also noted that the Playhouse was one of the five or six top theatres in the country, but its building was the worst: it was housed in what had once been Pringle's Picture Palace, which again demonstrates how perceptions of cinema buildings had changed.
However, it was not just a matter of perception. In the 1930s, some cinemas had closed because they could not be adapted to sound and, in the 1950s, cinemas that could not adapt to the new technologies of this period faced a similar fate. Hollywood, in a bid to compete with the supposed threat of television in the United States, introduced a range of technologies that were designed to emphasise the superiority of cinema over television by stressing the spectacle of cinema: forms such as widescreen and CinemaScppe,. Unfortunately, in some cinemas, the proscenium arch meant that the screen necessary
CONTEMPORARY UNDERSTANDINGS OF CINEMA CLOSURE                       137
The Cavendish today, Wells Road: 'out of date by modem standards'
for CinemaScope could not be accommodated. This was the case with both the Roxy in Daybrook and the Capitol.13 As the NEP put it, 'The introduction of sound, colour, cinemascope and cinerama had put the small cinema owner at a tremendous disadvantage.'14 The key problem was therefore the size of these cinemas rather than simply their age. As we have seen, the cinemas built before World War I were generally far smaller than those built in the late 1920s and 1930s and smaller cinemas were also more likely to close because they could not compete.
However, there are other reasons which suggest that the age of cinemas cannot be seen as a principal reason for their closure. During the period, some of the older cinemas were 'extensively re-decorated' and modernised, but closed none the less. The Boulevard in Hyson Green, one of Nottingham's first purpose-built cinemas, and the Beeston Palladium, which had been built for silent films, were both examples. Despite having been renovated, they were both forced to close. On the other hand, the Scala and the Hippodrome, which were both far older than either of these two cinemas and had been converted from theatres, had still not closed by the end of the 1960s. By 1971, however, even the Hippodrome (by then the Gaumont) was considered out of date and it was claimed that if it was reopened as a venue for other types of entertainment, 'it would have to be modernised on a large scale'.15 By the 1970s, the meaning of what was 'up-to-date' had changed: a cinema was now seen as 'old fashioned' if it could not be converted into a multi-screen.
However, neither the age of the cinema nor its inability to adapt to new technologies was ever seen as being responsible for a cinema's closure itself: the entertainment tax
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was usually seen as far more important. For example, the manager of the circuit that owned the Netherfield Cosy and the Palace at Bulwell maintained that the main reason for their closure was due to the entertainment tax, rather than the limitations of the buildings.
The remaining reasons the local press gave for cinema closure were the increasingly high operating costs, the lack of films available, and other demands upon the location. In the first case, it was argued that the post-war period saw an escalation in the operating costs that seriously threatened profitability. The manager of one of the largest Nottingham cinemas, for example, claimed that by the mid-1950s cinema running costs were three times what they had been in 1939. Fuel and power prices had risen due to high taxation and workers' wages had increased in proportion.16 Again this problem was particularly acute for the smaller cinemas and, in a HEP article announcing the closure of the Boulevard, Hyson Green, the manager explained that, like many other smaller cinemas, they Svere finding it impossible to carry on with wages and all other overheads constantly rising'.17
A shortage of films created competition between cinemas. The Odeon (formerly the Ritz) tended to get films first
CONTEMPORARY UNDERSTANDINGS OF CINEMA CLOSURE                       139
Another manager believed that one of the main problems facing the cinema industry was that the quality of films available was not good enough, and that patterns of cin-emagoing were changing: 'People today are shopping for their films ... They are only going for a particular film.' He continued to explain that the cinema industry 'has given us superlatives, but failed to live up to them. What has been hailed as a great film often squeaked like an old mouse.'18 However, it was not the quality of the films that was the -! primary problem, but rather the quantity. The 'shortage of film' was, for example, given as another reason for closing the Rank-owned Gaumont. The problem here was also that the three-screen Odeon, Rank's premier cinema in Nottingham, got the key films first, but it was also a more general phenomenon. As film audiences fell, fewer films were \ made; as fewer films were made, competition for films increased between cinemas; as  \ competition increased, some cinemas were forced out of business; as some cinemas were / forced out of business, audiences fell; and. so a vicious cycle was established.19              '
However, not all cinema closures were blamed on the above trends. Some cinemas claimed that they were not closing due to falling attendance, but rather that the building's lease had expired or that they had been offered incentives to sell the property. In 1962, for example, the director of the Highbury in Bulwell maintained that the cinema's closure was not due to bad business but that a generous offer had been made for the building by the Co-op.20 However, it is doubtful that the cinema would have accepted the offer if it had been doing well.
The Perceived Threat of Television
As a result, it was only quite late in the day that the papers started to see television as the main threat to cinema. Indeed, it was only once the entertainment tax was removed that television started to be seen as a major problem. In 1961, for example, the sale of six cinemas from the Levin's Circuit was blamed on the combined factors of television, crippling costs and the late removal of the entertainment tax.21 The cost of dnemago- < ing was also seen as a major contributing factor. Once the initial investment had been made, television was relatively cheap: there were no food or transportation costs; no need for a babysitter; and the whole family could watch it together at no extra cost. As a Mrs Dorothy Jackson commented in a letter to the TV Times, 'To go to the cinema where I live, to see a decent film, costs £1.25, including bus fares. What we get from nV in one week would add up to much more.'22 However, as this quote makes clear, it was not television per se that was seen as the threat, but rather commercial television, which began in 1954. Rank's chairman, for example, already believed that this was the \ case as early as 1956 when he stated:
having regard to the impact of commercial television during the year, which extended its coverage from London and South to Midlands and Northern counties - it is not surprising that cinema attendances have declined and that profits from exhibition are lower.23
He was correct to be more afraid of commercial television than of the BBC. It had over- :: taken the BBC in the ratings within two years of its launch, probably because, unlike the :
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BBC, it did not have the educational, highbrow image which alienated so many of the cinema audience. However, commercial television also spurred the BBC into making 'exceptional efforts ... with the result that our theatres and cinemas have to meet additional competition, not only from an ITV that can hardly be described as youthful and struggling, but of a hotted-up BBC as well'.24
There were also a further four reasons why television was seen as the main threat by the beginning of the 1960s. First, there was the reduction in the price of televisions. In 1956, the GJ reported that tax on television tubes and radio valves had been reduced which meant that television prices fell. For a 21-inch television, the new price for a cathode ray was £26 8s 6d (plus purchase tax), which was a reduction of £5 10s Id.25 Second, after I960, the number of films on television increased. The four main film trade organisations had introduced á levy of a quarter of a penny on cinema seats, which was used to fund the Film Industry Defence Organisation (FIDO), an organisation that aimed both to persuade film producers not to sell their films to television and to buy the rights to classic films.26 However, by I960, this initiative had failed, and the number of films on television began to increase dramatically.
The third reason that television was seen as a threat was the introduction of colour
TV which, the industry believed, would remove one of the central advantages of cinema
over television - its spectacle. This was the reason given for the closure"of the Windsor
; in 1963,27 but it seems highly unlikely that colour television would have had any effect
i on cinema attendance at this time. Colour television was not introduced until 1967, and
Television was only used as an explanation for the decline of cinema from the late -1950s onwards. The Metropole today
CONTEMPORARY UNDERSTANDINGS OF CINEMA CLOSURE                       141
even then most programmes were still shown in black and white. Indeed, in 1971, in a letter to the Radio Times, P Pascoe complained about this problem, and made special mention of its relation to sport. In reply, it was explained that the BBC often had to depend on sports coverage from countries that did not yet have colour television, and that many 'excellent and entertaining feature films were made in black-and-white. Their intrinsic quality is sufficient to claim a place for them in the schedules'. The response also claimed that about 90 per cent of programmes were broadcast in colour and that this percentage was increasing.28 The reference to colour television in relation to the closure of the Windsor was therefore probably due to the fact that colour television was a 'hot topic' at the time, and the main reason for the closure of the Windsor was actually the expiration of its ground lease.
The fourth and final reason that television was supposed to present a threat to the cinema was due to its sports programming. Since sport was largely seen as a male interest, and nien had greater purchasing power, sports programming was used as an incentive forinentö'büy ä TV and, as we will see, these decisions caused considerable tension in some families. Sport had always been a rival to the cinema as far as male audiences were concerned, but the decision to televise sport on Saturday nights was considered to be particularly damaging. The general secretary of the National Association of Theatrical and Číne Employees sent a telegram to the Football League asking them to abandon their proposed agreement with ATV In this message, he claimed that Saturday night football matches would dramatically affect attendance at provincial cinemas, many of which depended on their Saturday night takings. The telegram also claimed that these televised matches would hit the whole of the cinema industry and might lead to a complete breakdown in British film production. However, in 1956, both the ATV and the BBC offers were rejected by the Football League, which feared that the televised sport would both lead to a decline in gate takings and adversely affect minor sports which would not get televised.29 However, this decision was soon reversed and, until the 1970s, only sports-related programmes could be televised on Saturday mornings and early afternoons.30
Conclusion
As we have seen, for much of the 1950s, the decline in cinema attendance was largely blamed on the high taxation the industry faced in the form of the entertainment tax, which was compounded by other factors relating to the condition of the film industry itself. It was only towards the end of the 1950s that television was seen as a major threat. The meaning of television, however, was itself related to wider changes that were taking place in British society during the 1950s. The 'age of affluence' altered many people's leisure habits and these changes are the subject of the following chapter.
Notes
1.  Spanos, 1962, p. 22.
2.  NEN, 29 April 1955.
3.  GJ, 26 June 1956.
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4.  Board of Trade Journal, 22 August 1958, p. 388.
5.  GJ, 26 June 1956.
6.  GJ, 25 April 1957.
7.  GJ, 18 April 1957.
8.  Board of Trade Journal, 16 July 1969, p. 158.
9.  GJ, 10 July 1956.
10.  Ibid.
11.  NEE 29 April 1955.
12.  NEE 19 October 1959.
13.  They both still managed to show films in CinemaScope but, as Hornsey pointed out, a screen of 15 by 20 did not show the technology or the cinema off to their best advantage: Hornsey, 1994, p. 9.
14.  NEE 10 February 1957.
15.  NEE 6 January 1971.
16.  GJ, 26 June 1956.
17.  NEE 21 May 1956.
18.  NEE 22 October 1959.
19.  See Spanos, 1962.
20.  GJ, 2 March 1962.
21.  GJ, 26 August 1961.
22.  7VTi>w«,22Julyl971,p.45.
23.  NEE 12 September 1956.
24.  GJ, 16Aprill959.
25.  GJ, 30 June 1956.
26.  Buscombe, 1991, p. 202.
27.  NEE 9 March 1963.
28.  Radio Times, 11 March 1971, p. 57.
29.  GJ, 21 July 1956.
30.  TV Times, 21 January 1971, p. 5X
*
9
Locality, Affluence arid Urban Decay
Beyond the Threat of Television
As we have seen, television was only introduced as an explanation for the decline of cinema at a relatively late stage after the most significant decline in cinema attendance and, consequently, many critics have suggested other reasons for the post-war fate of cinema. For example, as Docherty, Morrison and Tracey put it, television was not the guilty party but, ■.. on the contrary, it 'was framed; the real culprits were Elvis Presley, expresso coffee, the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 and the sclerosis of the British exhibition industry'.1 That is, they claim that cinema attendance was threatened by the development of new forms of entertainment, particularly for the young, and most importantly by the removal of large sections of the population from town centres to new suburban developments:
The Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 completely transformed the conditions for a successful film industry. The Act led to the clearing of slums, the growth of new towns, the rebuilding of city centres and, crucially, the resiting of large sections of the working class. Between 1931 and the 1970s the inner cities lost around one-third of their population while the number of people living around the edges of the cities grew by around one quarter ... The population which sustained the cinema in the inner cities moved out.2
Docherty, Morrison and Třacey argue that this problem was compounded by a miscalculation on the part of the film industry, which 'believed that its fight was with an alternative technology for delivering moving pictures', the television, and therefore 'struck back at the technological level' by offering bigger and better spectacle, rather than by 're-siting the cinemas and following the audience to the new housing estates'.3
There is some local evidence to support this case. When St Ann's was cleared and many people were dispatched to out-of-town estates, the local cinemas in the area lost their patrons. The loss of audiences due to slum clearance was also identified as the reason for the closure of the Orion, Alfreton Road, although the entertainment tax and rising overheads were also mentioned. According to the circuit spokesman: 'the cinema was in a slum area with houses coming down and the regular patrons leaving for other districts'.4 The exodus to the suburbs was also given as the reason for the fall in the membership of the Mechanics Institute.5
However, the problem was not simply supposed to be geographical relocation. The move to the suburbs also involved a change in domestic routines. It took longer for those
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in work to get home, and this not only made the evenings shorter but thereby created less time to go out. The impact that the new estates had on city-centre entertainment was explained in detail by one respondent in the Nottingham oral history archive, who had been a tram conductor during the period:
When people got to Clifton, well they didn't want to come to the ITieatre Royal, to the Empire, to the Odeon, to the Gaumont or the other places of amusement, only on rare occasions or when there was something that was highly sensational, so you got a fall off in your attendances at cinemas and theatres and so on, and you got a fall off in traffic, y'see and the pubs and other places of entertainment not on the same standard as what were in the City were introduced at the Aspley's and Bilborough's and the Sherwood's and the Bestwoods estates. The people didn't want, after they'd gone home, they didn't want to go out, particularly on Monday to Fridays, Saturday and Sunday were a different kettle of fish ... the central means of leisure were being limited or curtailed or reduced and so was your pubs and other places that were ... and there, they were either stopping at home then you got television come in, that a person who'd been at work, had been transported three miles from the centre of the city, got home, wanted to go three miles to the pictures when he could look at the television or go to the pub which was being set up... in the area where he lived ... particularly you've got outside areas ... Mansfield was developing its own type of entertainment.. .6
A letter from a woman who wanted to see The Ipcress File demonstrated some of the difficulties involved in getting to the cinema that resulted from a change of domestic rhythms. She had a car and therefore transport was not a problem for her. However, the timing of the films did not fit in well with her domestic routines; it was difficult for her to get to the film for 5.40 p.m. because her husband returned home from work at this time, and she did not want to go to the late showing which made a trip to the cinema '. into a major event and meant that she returned home too late.7
There are, however, significant problems with the claims of Docherty and his colleagues. On the one hand, as we saw in Part Three, there is no reason why suburbanisation in and of itself should have produced such a problem. Indeed, it was the inter-war programmes of suburbanisation that created the conditions for the peak years of cinema attendance and, during this inter-war period, the industry followed the audiences out to the suburbs without any difficulties. On the other hand, as Martin Barker and Kate Brooks have argued, the evidence simply does not support the suburbanisation thesis. As Barker and Brooks put it:   .
The suburbanisation thesis would predict that the city centre cinemas would be hardest hit. In fact, the opposite is the case! Of the 22 cinemas that died in the key decade only 4 were city centre cinemas, whiie 18 were suburban. They provide the basis for our alternative explanation. Cinemas died because for a complex of reasons people discontinued the idea of the 'family night out'. Where they did, they tended to 'do it properly' by going into town -hence the disproportionate survival of city centre cinemas. This was the beginning of the process by which city centres at night became mainly the preserve of young people.8
LOCALITY, AFFLUENCE AND URBAN DECAY
145
The suburbanisation thesis would predict that city centre cinemas would be hardest hit. In fact, the opposite was the case!'. The Majestic today, Woodborough Road, Mapperley
The trouble with Barker and Brooks' account is that it only alludes to, but does not detail, this 'complex of reasons'.
However, despite its problems, the account provided by Docherty avoids the privatisation thesis present in many accounts of the decline of cinema. As we saw in the last chapter, many accounts of suburbanisation present it as part of a retreat from the public world of urban life into a privatised world of the suburban family; and television is often used as the key signifier in this process.9 However, as Shaun Moores has pointed out, "while television and radio have contributed to a domestication of popular entertainment - part of a larger process of "withdrawal into interior space" {Donzelot 1980) - they have also opened the "housěhóid up»toelectronically mediated public worlds'.10 He therefore invokes 'Williams' " concept of 'mobile privatisation'11 but emphasisesTboth "sides of the process. It is not simply about a retreat into the private but, on the contrary, this concept also suggests that 'the walls of the home are now more permeable, and far away events can be witnessed on TV virtually at the time they happen'. Nor was it simply that people were increasingly able to witness the outside without ever having to leave the home, but also that many were becoming ever more mobile. At the same time as television was supposedly keeping people indoors, cars and package tours were increasingly taking them further and further afield. Rather than a retreat into privacy, this period saw a major transformation of many people's experience of space, which profoundly affected the experience and meaning of locality.
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í As a consequence, a 'night out' increasingly meant a night in town rather than a j night in what had previously been seen as the 'local' area, and our findings clearly show i that, since the 1950s, people have been prepared to travel even further for a night out j at the pictures. As we will see, not only do many people today come into town from , all over the region for a night at the pictures from places as far afield as Loughbor-1 ough, Derby and Southwell, but also many Nottingham residents stated a preference ' for cinemas outside Nottingham, particularly the ABC Mansfield. In other words, : people's understanding of what constitutes their 'local area' changes with greater : mobility.
However, as Doreen Massey points out, greater mobility for some frequently leads to less mobility for others,12 and as a car culture developed throughout the 1950s and 1960s, public transport was increasingly cut back by government, a move that limited the mobility of others. Most significantly, as John Giggs has noted, thejocal train services that linked many Nottingham suburbs 'closed before the 1960s',13 a move that not onlyTímitec! the mobility of many Nottingham residents but also fundamentally, transformed the geography of the city. These local rail lines had circled the city and allowed for movement between suburbs but, as they closed, public transport was increasingly organised on a radial pattern with the city centre as its hub. Thus closure of the local railways cut suburbs off from one another and movement between them increasingly required a journey into the city centre and another journey out again.
For Docherty and his collegues, the decline in cinema attendance and the rise of television viewing are connected, but not in the way that is often suggested:
Rather than asserting a causal connection between cinema and television it is more accurate to say that the rise in television was caused by the same process underlying the decline in cinema attendance. Just as the conditions for the cinema emerged during one phase of industrial capitalism, which created a working-tclass concentration in large industrial conglomerations, with increased leisure time and a financial surplus; so the conditions for television were created by a rise in real wages, comfortable homes and the emergence of the nuclear family, which was concurrent with the sense that the working-class extended family was breaking up.14
While cinemagoing had been associated with luxury, affluence and social mobility during the inter-war period, it was the home, the car and the television set which became the key symbols of affluence in the post-war period.
_, Affluence and Leisure
» One factor that might explain the vast disjunctive between the experience of British and American patterns of cinemagoing in the ten years after World War II was the continued presence of rationing in Britain. While there were initial fears that America might return to Depression at the end of the war, it in fact experienced a period of virtually unrivalled prosperity. This situation created new symbols of affluence and new fantasies of abundance that displaced cinema from the position of centrality that it had enjoyed during
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the inter-war period. In Britain, however, the debts of the war created an 'age of austerity', and rationing continued well into the 1950s. The rationing of tea, sugar, sweets, butter, meat and cheese, for example, were only phased out between 1952 and 1954. Therefore, 1955 was a critical year that symbolised the dawning of a new 'age of affluence'. This change resulted in what Stuart Laing has described as an embourgeoisement thesis: not only did the television and the car become symbols of the new affluence but also it was claimed that the new prosperity that they symbolised had brought an end to class divisions. Thus, the old working classes were not only becoming affluent, but they were becoming indistinguishable from the middle classes: they were becoming bour- j, geois.15
This new affluence, and the patterns of consumption associated with it, were also clearly organised around the 'domestic unit of consumption'. Central to this process was the political promotion of home ownership. While the inter-war and the immediate postwar periods saw a massive programme of slum clearance and house building, the assumption was that many of the new buildings would be rented out, whether by local councils or private companies. In 1953, however, a White Paper on housing shifted the emphasis to owner occupation 'as Conservative rhetoric switched away from the number of houses built to the importance of owner-occupation by the individual family'.16 This shift was significant in a number of ways. It not only allowed the Conservatives to direct the issue away from the quality of the existing housing stock, it also operated ideologically. Owner occupation became a sign of the increasingly middle-class or classless nature of British society but it was also believed both by left and right that owner occupation would actually create a nation of Conservative voters. Once committed to home ownership, it was believed, the values of working-class people would become indistinguishable from those of the middle class.
Home ownership also had other implications. It helped consolidate a 'domestic unit of consumption', & unit of consumption that was not the individual but supposedly the family itself, and the emergence of this unit enabled the development of 'consumer durables' that were directed at the home as a unit of consumption. In this context, the car and the television acquired special significance, and as Laing puts it:
While car ownership spread less quickly than that of many domestic consumer durables it was more important in the imagery of affluence precisely because of its unavoidable visibility. The car out the front (or, even better, in the drive) together with the television aerial above symbolised the new way of life within. Television was, of course, the defining symbolic object of affluence. In 1951 there were still only 650,000 sets in Britain; by 1964 this had increased to 13 million - a rate of increasing outstripping every other domestic appliance.17
On the one hand, home ownership was associated with a notion of affluence of which the television was also a symbol but, on the other, home ownership for some also led to a greater importance of the home as a site for leisure and consumption.
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, As Garnham has pointed out in another context, the larger an investment is as a pro-j portion of income, the more likely it is that this investment will become the focus of I ■ future investment. As Garnham argues in the case of television:
consumption in cultural goods and participation in cultural practices increases in range and amount over virtually the whole spectrum of activities (except TV viewing) as income rises. This is hardly surprising. It is just normally ignored in discussions of cultural policy. The higher level of TV* consumption among the poorer sections of the community is attributable to the higher proportions of their total discretionary expenditure tied up in the relatively fixed investment in the TV set and licence. Once this investment is made, subsequent >     consumption is virtually free, making them a captive audiencévíD
r In this situation, not only is most leisure time invested in the watching of television, but í!  ( most future financial investments are made in relation to the television, investments that • \ will extend and enhance the original investment, such as investments in video players or 'in cable and satellite subscriptions.
In much the same way, for many of the new home-owners, the initial investment in the home not only encouraged people to centre more and more of their leisure time around this major financial investment, but it also encouraged them to make the home the recipient of further financial investments that might raise its value. As a result, the period not only saw a boom in leisure within the home but the amount spent on improving their homes also increased.
As a result, Mark Abrams, the managing director of Research Services Ltd, claimed that private consumption - expenditure on food, housing, fuel, light, household goods, private motoring and foreign travel - had increased markedly between the late 1940s and the late 1950s. He also believed that the trend would continue and that 'the average British consumer would spend more of his increasing affluence on making his home cleaner, warmer, brighter and better equipped*. This was in contrast to the amount spent on alcohol, tobacco, clothing and 'public' entertainment, which had all suffered a relative decline.19 W G. Bennett, a Nottingham cinema manager, also claimed at the Mechanics Institute Debating Society that TV, the do-it-yourself craze, home hobbies and the growing number of car owners had helped to keep thousands of people away from cinemas.20
Although car ownership created an opposite trend by taking people out of the home, it was still a family-centred activity. According to Mark Abrams, the biggest relative change in spending during the period was in relation to the motor car and, in 1959, one in four families had a car, a trend that heavily affected attendance at public entertainments. Once an investment had been made in a car, there was an incentive to realise the value of that investment by making it an alternative focus for leisure activities, such as a day out or a family caravaning holiday. The running costs of a car also made other forms of entertainment less affordable. The car also posed another problem for the cinema: parking in town became increasingly difficult, and those with cars became increasingly, resistant to leisure activities that required them to use public transport.
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However, it is important not to overstate the extent to which leisure time became more home-centred. Working people and especially their children had always felt an attachment to home, and while it is true that they had a less materialistic experience of home than the middle classes, this does not mean that they did not value domestic objects.21 Furthermore, while architectural historian Alison Ravetz claims that DIY 'did not gain full momentum until the later 1950s',22 the working class had always done then-own repairs and decorating. This took a considerable amount of time but, unlike postwar home improvements, was designed primarily to save money rather than to increase the financial value of the home. Another difference in the post-war period was that certain sections of the middle classes started to do work on their own houses, rather than paying others to do it for them and, in the process, home improvements started to acquire new meanings. Increasingly, home improvements came to signify not only the material upkeep of the home, but also increasingly expressed the individualised lifestyle of the family.
Furthermore, demographic changes meant that there was more space for domestic leisure activities. Working-class leisure had traditionally taken place outside the home because there had not been enough space for it, not because they did not 'feel at home*. The lack of space was partly to do with house size and partly due to the lack of central heating, which meant that the use of rooms was restricted for much of the year. It was also a result of large families which meant that children and adolescents had to spend more time out of the home. Once the size of families fell from a national average of 4.5 in 1911 to 3.4 in 1951,23 more space was available in the home. Children might get their own room, where they could read or do homework without interruption, and fathers felt less pressure to visit the public house as a way of escaping noisy children or bath night in front of the fire. Heating, of course, remained a problem into the 1960s and 1970s, and working-class families still had less space and more people per house. For example, as Pearl Jephcott found in her 1967 study of three towns in Scotland, one-third of adolescents had six or more people living in the home.24
Thus, there was both a perceived and real increase in the amount of time spent at home. This was reflected in the local press which reported that more people were drinking, reading and even playing guitars in their homes.25 In 1959, D. Fry of the Nottingham and District Off Licences Protection Association claimed that TV and foreign travel had increased wine drinking 'to an unprecedented level' and that TV 'must surely have helped if it has encouraged drinking in the home'. He explained that there had been a 50 per cent rise in sales between 1950 and 1957.26 The Nottinghamshire Education Committee also reported that the number of readers borrowing books from its county libraries had gone up by a third and that the number of books issued had risen by 50 per cent in the five years prior to 1958.27 In 1959, the director of Allen and Unwin claimed that there had been a six-fold increase in book sales since 1939, and that he believed that this was the result of rising education and higher incomes,28 although the introduction of Penguin paperbacks in 1935, which sold at about 6d, probably had a greater impact on book ownership.29 These contemporary articles contradict historian Arthur Marwick's claim that people were actually reading less and that book sales were
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The new affluence created a whole series of new leisure forms that competed with the cinema for the population's leisure time, displacing cinema from the centre of people's leisure. The Ritz today
lower in the 1960s than they had been in the 193 0s.30 Halsey's figures, on the other hand, support the contemporary evidence and he argues that book sales had in fact increased by 90 per cent since 1939.31 Another problem with Marwick's position is that it does not take into account the number of books that were being borrowed from libraries, which almost doubled between 1932 and 1963 from 247,335 to 460,504.
In other words, the new affluence created a whole series of new leisure forms that competed with the cinema for the population's leisure time, displacing cinema from the centre of people's leisure. While the town centre became the prime location for 'a night out', the town centre itself was now in competition with the motor car as well as the home as the focus of leisure activities.
The Changing Meanings of the City Centre
In the process, the meaning of the town centre was also changing. By the 1960s, as with many other cities, the migration of people from the town centre led to its decline and decay and, for many people, it was seen a dangerous and alien place.32 Several letters to the local press complained about the roughness of the town centre and claimed that it put people off making trips into town, particularly after dark. Women in particular felt threatened and two young women wrote to the local press to express their outrage when one of them was 'seized' by two 'drunken louts'. They also claimed to have witnessed-'several violent incidents' in which bus conductors had been attacked by youths. They
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demanded: 'How can a decent young woman enjoy an evening in the city if the present state continues?'33 These fears were also fuelled by the bus drivers' strike in 1965, which was organised in protest against the number of violent attacks made upon them at night: there were reputed to have been fifteen such attacks in 1965 alone.34
Cinema was particularly implicated in this process. As early as the mid-1950s, Teddy boys had caused disturbances in the cinemas, giving the impression that cinema had been appropriated by troublesome teenagers. However, another letter blamed cinema and television for 'Saturday night hooliganism', and claimed that the root of the problem was 'the lower moral standards generally accepted' which were 'largely the result of a sustained programme of X-films, kitchen-sink [drama] and such things as the BBC deletion of "Lift Up *&ur Hearts" programme'.35 As audiences changed, many cinemas turned to the X-rated feature to stay in business, a move that alienated certain audiences still further but also came to be blamed for the very sense of urban decay of which they were the product.
One reason for this sense of decay was not a lack of investment, but ironically the exact opposite. As an NEP article of 4 December 1962 noted, 'Britain's cities of the Sixties are becoming just a man-made hell'. It was claimed that 'in an economy where there is full employment and a steady level of prosperity coupled with high rents, it becomes profitable to pull down city centres and erect tall buildings'. As a result, the town centre was converted from a place of residence into one of office buildings. This process accounts for some of the concerns above. A city centre dominated by office workers empties out after work and can have a desolate and threatening atmosphere at night.
However, the article also complained about the effect on the city-centre environment during the day: 'Nobody would dispute that part of the city mystique is busyness and bustle, but nowadays this quality has become frantic, with hordes of people neurotically hurrying from place to place, breathing petrol fumes, and becoming almost the quarry of the metallic monsters that belch out the smoke.' While some of these machines are clearly seen as those 'ripping old buildings to pieces and replacing them with huge office blocks', the car was particularly singled out as a major cause of the city centre's problem 'which is forcing renewal'. The article therefore quoted Mr Thomas of the Town and County Planning Association, 'a "pressure" group which has as its objective "decent living conditions and the opportunities for a full life"'. According to Mr Thomas, the car was increasingly determining the agenda of city redevelopment. As he puts it, "We have to keep it moving ... park it, and prevent conflict between pedestrians and cars.'
However, despite the 'high profit to be made by putting [money] into the redevelopment of town centres', the article stressed that the same is not true of residential housing. It quotes Mr Thomas who rather prophetically claimed that 'the tragedy is that we are still building thousands of substandard houses and will bitterly regret it'. As he went on to add: There is a clear conflict between the commercially advantageous rebuilding of city centres and what is desirable for civilised standards of living.' His solution was to scale down the size of cities and develop new towns where the scale and pace of life would not create 'the miserable conditions in which people are being forced to live' at the present. Thus, as the article noted, while the 'age old choice has been between city
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life and that in rural surroundings ... even the enthusiasts are beginning to find that cities in the sixties are fast becoming unbearable'.36
Similar concerns were being voiced in other cities and other countries. Indeed, 1962 was also the year that witnessed the publication of Jane Jacobs' classic critique of urban planning and redevelopment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities?1 In it, she articulated a growing sense of opposition to the transformation of the urban landscape by government and developers and the 'demand that local communities should have greater say in the shaping - and especially the reshaping - of their own neighbourhoods'.38 Similar arguments were also being made about the clearance of the East End slums. For example, as Laing has pointed out, best-selling sociological studies such as Family and Kinship in East London and Education and the Working Class 'ultimately offered a defence, and even a celebration of certain "traditional" working-class life-styles and values which became easily lost in the move to more modern, expansive and materially comfortable ways of life'.39 They therefore presented a critique of the developers and educationalists who sought to impose their own order upon this class, rather than accepting and developing 'the best qualities of working-class living'.''0
Notes
1.  Docherty, Morrison and Tracey, 1987, p. 5.
2.  Ibid., pp. 25-6.
3.  Ibid., p. 28.
4.  NEN, 10 April 1959.
5.  NEP, 20 April 1959.
6.  Nottingham oral history archive transcript: A35/a-b/l: 19-20.'
7.  EPN, 1 June 1965.
8.  Barker and Brooks, 1998, p. 189-
9.  See Silverstone, 1997.
10.  Moores, 2000, p. 5.
11.  'Williams, 1974.
12.  Massey, 1994.
13.  Giggs, 1997, p. 460.
14.  Docherty, Morrison and Tracey, 1987, p. 25 (although we would point out that the nuclear family long predates this period).
15.  Laing, 1986, p. 17.
16.  Ibid., p. 26.
17.  Ibid., p. 29.
18.  Garnham, 1990, pp. 124-5.
19.  NEP, 18 November 1959.
20.  NEP, 22 October 1959.
21.  See Faire, 1998, p. 178.
22.  Ravetz, 1995, p. 169.
23.  Census 1951 England and Midies: Housing Report, London: HMSO, 1956, p. xxiii.
24.  Jephcott, 1967, p. 104.
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25.  According to the EPN, 'Beatlemania has brought such a demand for guitars ... that thousands are having to be imported from abroad.' One of Nottingham's biggest guitar shops claimed that they sold sixty guitars a week, and they would sell more if they were available: 'With wages in the city factories high, Nottingham's young people can often afford the best in six-stringed music, and they buy it': EPN, 11 December 1963.
26.  NEP, 20 October 1959.
27.  GJ, 9 July 1958.
28.  GJ, 29 October 1959.
29.  Clarke, 1996, p. 212.
30.  Marwick, 1982,1996, p. 136.
31.  Halsey, 1972, p. 565.
32.  EPN, 17 July 1965; EPN, 31 July 1965.
33.  EPN, 21 July 1965.
34.  EPN, 23 July 1965.
35.  EPN, 27 July 1965.
36.  NEP, 4 December 1962.
37.  Jacobs, 1962.
38.  Hall, 1996, p. 262.
39.  Laing, 1986, p. 46.
40.  Jackson and Marsden, 1966, p. 224. See also %ung and Wilmott, 1957.
10
From Cinemagoíng to Television Viewing: The Developing Meanings of a New Medium
Changing Places: Rim and the Transformation of Television
While television is often seen as responsible for the decline in cinemagoíng, most people consume dnemagoing and television as different, rather than rival, experiences. Indeed, one problem with seeing television as the major threat to cinema is that this claim is usually made in retrospect, and hence ignores the extent to which the meaning of each activity is defined in relation to the other.1 In 1948, for example, during its negotiations with J. Arthur Rank, the BBC had maintained that: 'It is no part of the Corporation's intention to convert the BBC Television Service into a home cinema, showing mainly commercial films. It has a far more serious responsibility.'2 This attitude had already been noted by Rank in 1946, and he believed that it was responsible for driving young people into the cinema.3 Since the BBC displayed a contempt for films and believed that it had a far loftier educational mission, it was often seen as dull and didactic, particularly by the young. This partly explains why the BBC averaged only one feature film per week in the 1950s, although it was also due to the pressure of the exhibitors, who were trying to prevent films from being sold to television. As a result, the ATV schedule was not much different and, although TV schedules varied from week to week, the ATV schedule that we looked at for 1956 did not have any films at all.
This situation meant that if people were staying at home rather than going to the cinema, they were probably not seeing as many films as before, and they were certainly not getting the choice offered by the local cinemas. The films that they did see would also have been quite old, and probably from before 1938. However, from 1960, the number of films shown by the BBC increased dramatically. By July 1966, there were six films shown in the second week of July although this may not have been representative as it was during the World Cup. In February 1971, the number of films per week had increased to fourteen, and this was about standard for the next decade with seventeen films being shown in the same week in February 1976 and fifteen in the same week in February 1981. The main difference between 1966 and 1976 was that ľTV was showing films on weekend afternoons, and there were occasional films on Saturday mornings for children. By 1976, there was also a film every day of the week, which had not been the case in 1966 and 1971, and ľTV and BBC were showing films in competition. There were also special weekly slots for certain types of films - the Western being a classic example. By the. 1970s,, then, television had become the primary site of film consumption. More people consumed
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155
more films via the television than at the cinema, and while this change was due, in part, to FIDO's failure to prevent films from being sold to television, it was also due to a more general change in the meanings of both television and the cinema.
Indeed, when one refers to 'films on television', one needs to be careful. The figures above are actually for 'feature films', but it is worth stressing that it was only with the advent of television that the term 'film' came to mean 'feature film'. Early on, the BBC's use of the term 'film' did not refer to feature films alone, but anything that was recorded using film or which might have composed part of an evening's programme at the cinema. Hence, The Magic Roundabout was a 'French film', and there were also documentary films, as opposed to documentary programmes, and 'film series' such as Bewitched and Dr Kildare.
One of the problems here is that it was only during this period that a night out at the cinema became predominantly about watching a single feature film rather than a full evening's programme. Critics have often opposed cinema and television specifically through assumption that cinema viewing was concerned with a bounded text (the feature
The decline in cinema-going was related to the changing meaning of town centres, which were increasingly seen as dangerous and alien places. The Ritz today
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film) while television was predominantly about sequence or flow.4 However, it was only in the 1950s and 1960s that people started to see films in separate performances.5 Prior to this, cinema had also been about the sequence and flow of the programme but, as tele-j vision started to schedule feature films, the meaning of cinema was reconstructed as one j almost solely about the viewing of a single feature film. As cinema became less a habit j and more of a special event, the feature film became the focus of that event and the rest of the programme fell away. In other words, the programming of feature films on television was part of the process through which the meaning of a night at the cinema ^changed.
This change, however, was highly significant, and needs to be understood in terms of the changing nature of the film audience. During this period, the cinema audience was becoming predominantly middle class, or rather a process was taking place by which the cinemas were not only losing their working-class audience, but cinema was gaining in respectability in the process. As Garnham has pointed out, as forms of popular entertainment lose their traditional popular audiences, they become a rare taste, which enables and encourages their appropriation by the very classes that had previously despised them.6 The focus on the individual film was therefore not only closer to the consumption patterns of pure and legitimate taste, but it was a strategy already associated with the art cinema.7
/ The meaning of cinema also changed in other ways. As Barbara Klinger has pointed v out, it was during this period that the cinema of the 1930s and the 1940s came to be j reconstructed as 'classics'. As the cinema audience dwindled, film societies and repertory cinemas began to spring up in Britain and America that specialised in reruns of 'classics' of the 'Old Hollywood'.8 Television was also participating in-tfte process. In order to make old films desirable events, they had to be recontextualised as 'classics' rather than simply outdated relics of a bygone medium. Television not only featured Western series, but also showed 'matinees' and 'the Saturday Night Movie', all of which alluded to, and worked to create, a notion of a golden age of cinema. These processes also worked to construct a profound sense of nostalgia for the cinema in which 'the "Old" in many cases appeared better and more authentic than the "New"'.9 The very films that had been seen as the epitome of shoddy inauthentidty came to be redefined through their opposition to a supposedly shoddy and inauthentic present.
Consuming Television: The Cultural Meanings of a Material Object
However, the television was not simply the programmes that it showed, just as the cinema was not only the films that it projected. The television was also a material object and, as Shove and Southerton have argued, one should not isolate and abstract individual household objects 'from the contexts and circumstances in which they are acquired and used'.10 For example, the acquisition of the television set was shaped by a series of different factors. In 1950 about 3.2 per cent of wired households had a television, but by 1960 this had increased to 73.7 per cent and, by 1970, 93.4 per cent of households had a black-and-white television and 3.6 per cent had a colour television.11 In 1954, the Daily Mail Ideal Home Book claimed that the peak audience was around
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8 million and that the majority of viewers were in families earning under £12 per week.12 This was possibly a 'popular' conception of TV viewers and Needleman showed a quite different pattern of ownership in the National Institute Economic Review in 1960. According to Needleman, in 1956 (only two years after the Daily Mail article) 50.5 per cent of middle-class homes had a television as compared with 35.5 per cent of working- \ class homes. By 1958, this gap had closed, and 53.4 per cent of middle-class homes had \ a television compared with 51.1 per cent of working-class homes.13 This pattern was dif-, i ferent from some parts of the USA, where the middle classes seemed to be more  '; reluctant to buy televisions.14 The highbrow image of the BBC was probably partly ( responsible for this difference, and the middle-class attitudes of the management were reflected in TV scheduling such as the Toddler's Truce' which was designed to fit the ' daily rhythms of middle-class households.15
Gender was also a significant factor in the acquisition of the television. As Tim O'Sul-Iivan found in his oral histories, men were usually 'ultimately responsible for the decision to buy the set',16 and this position is confirmed by Sue Bowden and Avner Offer's analysis of sales figures. They conclude that 'time-using goods', such as televisions and radios, were bought before 'time-saving goods', such as washing machines, because men had greater purchasing power within the home, and 'time-using goods' were seen to benefit the whole family unlike 'time-saving goods' which were considered only to benefit their wives.17 Van Zoonen and Wieten also found a similar pattern in 1950s' Netherlands where television was 'hardly ever a result of the needs of women in the family'.18 Also, since hire-purchase forms had to be signed by the head of the household,19 the set was generally seen as belonging to the man of the house who was also considered the legal owner. In 1960, when Margret Ward's ex-husband broke into her home and took the television set, the police told her that she had to let him take it because he had bought it.20 This remained the situation until the Matrimonial Property Act of 1970, when it was decreed that household goods that were paid for by a husband were also partly owned by his 'non-working' wife.
Male ownership of the television set also had implications for its use. On a domestic level, some men felt that they had the right to decide how it should be used. They made the decision about when and what to watch, and this created conflict between couples. In a letter to the TV Times, one woman complained that her husband, who was the one who usually switched on the television, would go to bed without switching it off. Furthermore, she also claimed that, when the alarm sounded at shutdown, she was the one that was expected to leap out of bed to turn it off.21 An extreme example from the NEP was one husband who would remove the plug from the television to make sure that his wife did not watch the set while he was out and, in this case, the wife filed for divorce on the grounds of cruelty, and won.22
A Matter of Taste: Conflicts over Television Programming
Television programming and content was another reason for discord between couples, and these clashes over taste were more likely to make it into the letters page than conflicts over usage. For example, Mrs Challender wrote to the Radio Times and complained about the clash between Elizabeth R and Sportsnight:
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I can foresee six weeks of argument with my husband. He is addicted to Sportsntght with Coleman (BBC1), whereas I don't wish to miss the new series Elizabeth R (BBC2). This conflict must arise in a lot of families. Please do not tell me to get two television sets. Do change one of these programmes to another night or time.25
The assumption of both Mrs Challender and the BBC was that it was the wife who would have to give way. Some women also felt that the programmers were responsible for this conflict. They believed that the programmers were aware of who had the domestic purchasing power and therefore geared television towards the tastes and interests of men. In 1976, two letters to the TV Times complained about this. As the first put it:
I live in a man-less household and we have for years criticised the way both channels cater for men's sports programmes on Saturday afternoons. BBC2 put on a film but is always a man's film. Us females can lump it.
It ended by commenting: T suspect that the powers-that-be are all men/24 The second letter also wanted to know 'Why is it that only men are catered for on television?' and felt that this bias was demonstrated by the fact that, while 'manufactured women, made to look excessively exciting' were continually on television, there was no equivalent for women.23
However, while there seems to have been a bias to male tastes and interests, this should not be overemphasised. The reply to Mrs Challender's letter stated that the '"sex war" which the conflicting attractions of Sportsntght and Elizabeth R had provoked ... is without precedent'. In the previous year, they claimed, the BBC had shown The Six Wives of Henry VIII at the same time as Sportsnight Svhich met with almost no complaint and attracted a very high audience to BBC2'.26 Furthermore, analysis of the programmes on BBC in 1955-56 reveals that sport got only slighdy more coverage than light entertainment and comedy: 11.9 per cent of programmes broadcast were on sport compared with 13.2 per cent on light comedy and entertainment, although there were another 9.3 per cent on news and sports news. Children's programmes also made up 15.6 per cent of the schedules, which was the second highest coverage after documentaries, which made up 21.7 per cent. Between 1955 and 1989, the percentage of programmes on sport remained the same - around 12-14 per cent - while the number of light entertainment and children's programmes fell to around 6-8 per cent. This decline also coincided with an increase in the number of films shown which seemed to fill the gap left by light entertainment.27
However, gender conflicts were not the only tensions that surrounded the television. There were also conflicts between the different age groups. While Barclay's survey of Scottish adolescents claimed that teenagers were allowed to watch pretty much what they liked on TY28 the report also noted that there was a great deal of argument between teenagers and parents over what to watch, and that parents usually won. Those teenagers who remained at school were more likely to have their viewing regulated - which suggests that regulation was more class-based since middle-class children tended to remain
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at school longest. However, conflicts between different age groups were not confined to the family, and there were public complaints over the amount of programming devoted to teenagers. One pensioner complained:
n*V should devote less time to teenagers and a little more to old people. There is already 45 minutes of Thank Your Lucky Stars and now Ready, Steady, Go is back again. Couldn't this half hour be given to pensioners?29
However, as one teenager responded:
Does Mrs Hobbis know that there are about 65 hours (I counted) of television in one week? One hour and 15 minutes of this is for teenagers, and about six hours and 15 minutes of it for children, leaving 57 hours and 30 minutes for adults. I don't mind pensioners having a half-hour to themselves, but could they have it out of adults' time instead of that of teenagers?
The lack of programmes for teenagers may explain why the Governor Director of Sales Consultants believed that teenagers were not that interested in TV and that, when they did watch it, they did so at particular times of the day: Television is not so much use in selling teenage products ... They're never in to watch it except in the early or late evening.'30 The lack of teenage programmes could have been one reason why cinema continued to be popular with this audience throughout the 1960s when adults were staying away. However, it was more likely that there was little provision on television for teenagers because teenagers were resistant to television viewing as an activity. Teenagers preferred the cinema because it was not subject to parental surveillance, while television's location within the home made parental surveillance virtually inevitable.
The Uses of Television
While it may have been the centre of various familial conflicts, the television was also seen as a way of bringing the family together through laughter or by provoking discussion.3 l As one letter writer to the TV Times put it: 'Who said that "the box" has killed the art of conversation? In our house it has the opposite effect. Without the television we read in silence, but watching it revives memories, stimulates discussion and leads to many witticisms.'32 Another asked for a blank screen after each programme 'for three to five minutes to allow family talk and discussion of what has been seen'.33 There were also quite a number of letters to the TV Times that asked for information to resolve family disagreements that had arisen while discussing TV programmes.34 Furthermore, the association between television viewing and family life was demonstrated in 1956 when miners at Bolsover Colliery went on strike until the Coal Board would agree to their request to end their shift fifteen minutes early at 8.45 p.m. so 'that they could have more time in the evenings to be with their families and to watch TV.35
Television viewing also had other familial uses. Both O'SuUivan and Goodman, for example, have referred to the way in which television was used as a way of rewarding
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children for good behaviour,36 but it was also used as a form of childminder. In his study of radio and domestic routines, for example, Shaun Moores has argued that in the 1930s the BBC attempted to plan its radio schedule around everyday routines, so that there were children's programmes at lunchtime and when they came home from school, and that the news was on at night after adults had returned from work;'7 He also noted that 'children's hour' was scheduled to coincide with the preparation of the evening meal when housewives were less inclined to listen to the radio, and would have welcomed getting the kids out from under their feet.38 Many of these issues were also applicable to the TV schedules - especially in the early days when children's television was between five and six in the evening.39 One Nottingham woman with ten children explained how useful the television was as a childminder: 'I never have time to watch it myself, of course, but I like it because it keeps the children amused and lets me get on with odd jobs which I don't have time to fit in during the day.' The interviewer also observed how, in this instance, television helped people manage their time: *Whoever called television the greatest time-waster in the world should meet Mrs Lane.'40 Nor was Mrs Lane alone in valuing television as a dhildminder:
This is a cry from the heart! Please, please could some children's films be shown on Saturday mornings, during the winter months, when children are indoors?
I know of many mothers who feel the same, getting to absolute screaming point trying to cope with chores and squabbling children.
Waiting until the afternoon for a children's programme is a nightmare, not to mention having to wait through an afternoon of sport before there's anything suitable for young children.41
However, it was not only adults who were aware of the cluldminding benefits of the television. One twelve-year-old suggested: "Why not put on more children's programmes in the mornings and afternoons, particularly during school holidays? It would give mothers the chance for a bit of peace.'42
The television was not only used to keep children away from their mothers, but also as a form of company for those living on their own. Lesley of the TV Times responded to one letter about an old woman who was using her TV as company by explaining that: 'From the many letters I receive from both young and elderly people living alone, I know that the television does give them companionship as well as entertainment.'43 However, it was not just people who lived alone who used the TV for company. For example, O'Sul-livan suggested that women used TV as an 'antidote against domestic isolation'.44 Furthermore, one letter to the TV Times demonstrated that this isolation or loneliness was not confined to the daytime:
My husband has recently started to work on a night shift at the factory where he is employed and I am sure that there are many more wives who like me would welcome the idea of ITV showing a late programme, perhaps a film or a repeat of a popular series during the week..It. would certainly make the nights seem shorter!45
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Alternatively, another woman, who was stuck in her bedroom after the birth of her baby, was cheered up considerably when her husband brought the television upstairs so that she could watch it.46
The Contexts of Viewing
As this later point makes clear, we ne.ed to be careful about the presumed context of television viewing. While much research has benefited from its presumption that the cultural politics of the domestic living room was the primary social context for the analysis of television viewing, not all television viewing takes place within the home and, even when it does,47 the living room is not the only location within which television is watched. Televisions were, and still are, kept in a variety of rooms. In the 1950s and 1960s, they were generally in sitting rooms, parlours and living rooms, but if a television was kept in the sitting room or parlour, it would have been used differently from those located in the living room. The latter was often the place where people sat and ate, and it was therefore easier to watch television while eating the evening meal. Also television viewing in the living room may have been more communal, although it could also create conflicts. This room was used for a range of other activities, and this made it harder to follow programmes. However, if the set was located in a sitting room or parlour, this location would have changed the nature of television viewing considerably. The sitting room, for example, was rarely a feature of working-class homes, but in those homes that did have one, it had a very different function from the living room. It was not a room in which one ate but, unlike a parlour, it was used on a regular basis, if only for sitting. As a result, in homes where the television was kept in the sitting room or parlour, the television might be watched by certain members of the family or at specific times such as weekends. The functions of these rooms have, of course, changed since the 1950s, and the functions of the living room and the sitting room have converged. However, televisions are also found in a number of other rooms, and the activity of watching television in the kitchen, your own room or someone else's room have quite different meanings.
Even in 1960, there was also a range of places outside the home in which people watched television, such as the club, pub, friends' homes and even in cafes. The Scottish adolescent survey, for example, found that, after the home, the next most popular place to watch television was at a friend's house, which meant that the television viewing was never an activity that was limited to the private, nuclear family. On the contrary, in the early days, television was a novelty and people with televisions would often invite their friends and neighbours over to watch the television. Rather than a retreat into privatised space, it was the focus of communal activities.
Furthermore, despite their stated preferences, few people faced the choice between cinema and television as a straight or exclusive choice, and therefore most people continued to engage in both forms of film consumption. The choice between these two had always been a choice between different types of experience, but experiences whose meanings were defined in relation to one another. 'Going out' is therefore the inverse of 'staying in', and while some people may state a general preference for staying in, most would also go out on specific occasions. Similarly, while some may state a preference for
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As films began to be shown on television, cinema was reconstructed as a nostalgic and glamorous object. The Elite today is no longer in use as a cinema but has a preservation order on it
a night out, they would still value a night in every now and again. In other words, the choice between these activities was never simply a matter of straightforward preference but a choice between different social activities with different meanings that can be appropriate or inappropriate at different times. Even those who rarely go to the cinema often have ritual periods when they do go: many, for example, saw cinema as a 'treat', something that they would do at Christmas or for someone's birthday;48 while others see the cinema as the best place for a first date.49
Even those who watch television in the home sometimes try to recreate the 'cinema experience' in their own homes, although there are a number of different ways in which people actually define the 'cinema experience'. When Valerie Avery's mother bought a television around 1955, for example, the family were the first in the neighbourhood to have one and Valerie describes how they tried to recreate the cinema experience. First, the room was normally oriented towards the fire rather than the television, so the family would rearrange all the furniture around the set before the 'performance' started. This ritual also shows that they were trying to construct television viewing as a special and concentrated event. In this example, the television was also kept in the front room, which was reserved for special occasions. Thus the front room and the television added to each other's importance: the television was special and therefore kept in the front room, while the fact that the television was watched in the front room also bestowed status on this room. In addition, the family always switched off the lights while they were watching, and her grandmother would bring a bag of sweets whenever they watched the Sunday night play. The absence of lights is particularly significant as it was one way in which the
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Although cinema itself        *
came to be seen as nostalgic and glamorous, many cinemas acquired new and less glamorous uses. The Capitol today
event was marked off from other domestic activities and concentration was demanded of the viewer. It removed the differences that many people use to justify their preference for television - the ability to do other things while the television is on. It also created the conditions that most people associate with the cinema - the lack of distractions. It is therefore significant that many respondents still described similar rituals that they would perform before they watched a film on television: arranging furniture; putting the answer machine on; turning the lights off. In so doing, they actively sought to construct film viewing as distinct from 'normal' television, and to privilege this activity as a specific event or occasion that was separate form the 'ordinary' or 'everyday'.50 Valerie's family also watched the entire evening's programme of about three hours, which made it not unlike going to the cinema when it consisted of more than a main feature. When television shut down, however, all the furniture would be moved back into its daytime position.51
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Conclusion: Contrast and Comparison
However, while some tried to recreate the cinema experience in their own homes, others considered the two media as incompatible. For example, Buscombe cites one commentator who believed that the two experiences were completely different and required different types of programming:
It is doubtful if there exists a cinema film of any appreciable length that is ideally suited to the television screen. In the first place, the commercial film is made essentially for a mass audience, not a group in the sitting-room. Secondly, because it is for a mass audience its tempo is much faster, with quick-cutting technique that can be disturbing when viewed at home.32
The differences between cinema and television were also discussed by Joyce Crammond in 1976:
Although, superficially, [cinema and television] seem alike, there are several differences in terms of context, availability and content. Television viewing takes place in the home where one can move around; it is freely available and provides a wide range of programmes. On the other hand, at the cinema there is no opportunity to move around, there are few distractions, visits must be planned with the available times, and some effort made to get there; also there is, in the main, only fictional content.
She also compared the use of television and radio:
Television and radio are more alike in terms of context, availability and content. Radio has the added advantage of being portable and provides at any time a wider selection of programmes ... The aspect which makes it less attractive, of course, is its non-visual format and is perhaps for some consumers, particularly children, less absorbing.33
Although the majority of the adolescents in the Scottish survey preferred cinema to television, those who preferred TV gave a variety of reasons for their choice, many of which would have applied to all age groups. For example, some preferred TV because their homes were not cold, dingy and smoky, while others liked watching television because they did not have to keep getting up to let people get to their seats.34 While Sheldon may have affectionately remembered the experience of being continually disturbed throughout the film, many at the time found it thoroughly annoying.55 TV was also preferred because there was no queuing and no cold bus journey home. One teenager even claimed that he found home to be more relaxing and much quieter: 'you can put your feet up in comfort. In the pictures you can hardly hear the film for the usherettes shouting at people',56 Adolescents also liked the freedom of being able to move about and talk as much as they liked, or to be able to watch in silence. They also liked being able to switch off without thinking that they had wasted their mpneyby doing so.57
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Notes
1.  As Jane Stokes has argued, the perceived rivalry between the cinema and television often meant that films represented television in specific ways and television represented the film industry in various different ways. See Stokes, 1999. However, although these 'on-screen rivalries' did affect the meanings of each medium, the following discussion is not concerned with the ways in which they represented one another but rather other ways in which they changed meaning in relation to one another.
2.  Quoted in Buscombe, 1991, p. 202.
3.  Cited in ibid., p. 200.
4.  These latter terms originate in Williams, 1974.
5.  See Williams, 1994, pp. 14-17; and Hawkins, 2000b, pp. 13-30.
6.  Garnham, 1990.
7.  Hawkins, 2000b.
8.  Gomery, 1992; Mark Jancovich, 2002b.
9.  Klinger, 1994, p. 84.
10.  Shove and Southerton, 2000, p. 303.
11.  Bowden and Offer, 1994, pp. 745-6. See also Bain, 1962, pp. 145-67.
12.  Black, 1954, p. 220.
13.  Needleman, 1960, p. 27.
14.  Saxon, 1956, p. 94. The Netherlands was more like Britain in that TVs were at first bought by the better-off: van Zoonen and Wieten, 1994, p. 647.
15.  Faire, unpublised thesis, 1998, p. 167.
16.  O'SulHvan, 1991.P-164.
17.  Bowden and Offer, 1994, p. 740. See also Gray, 1992, p. 61.
18.  Van Zoonen and Wieten, 1994, p. 649.
19.  This situation was made painfully apparent to Joyce Storey when she wanted to buy a washing machine in 1952. See Storey, 1995, p. 39.
20.  Wird, n.d. p. 35.
21.  Letter from Mrs M. S. Bowen to the TVTimes, 7 October 1971, p. 20.
22.  GJ, 20 November 1957.
23.  Letter from Mrs A. Challender to the Radio Times, 4 March 1971, p. 58. The fact that the BBC took two columns to reply to this letter suggests that the issue was considered to be an important one, despite the claim that there had been 'almost' no complaint in the previous year.
24.  Letter from Mrs R Burton to the TV Times, 18 March 1976, p. 30.
25.  Letter from V B. Saunders to the TV Times, 18 March 1976, p. 30. There were also a couple of letters which complained about the lack of women on programmes such as This is Your Life and on TV panels.
26.  Robin Scott, Controller of BBC, reply to A Challender's letter to the Radio Times, 4 March 1971, p. 58.
27.  BBC %arbook and Annual Reports/BBC Handbook and Report and Accounts, 1950-1990.
28.  Barclay, 1961, pp. 36,40.
29.  Letter from Mrs S. Hobbis to TV World, 7 April 1966, p. 22.
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30.  G], 23 March 1959.
31.  Lynn Spigel has demonstrated that, in America, the introduction of television was directly connected to constructions of the domestic ideal. See Spigel, 1992.
32.  Letter from Eileen Fielding to TV Times, 8 July 1971. As with early cinema, it was often the cultural middle classes who believed the opposite. For example, Cleethorpes schoolmaster Mr W B. Cockerill told Lindsey Education Committee that too many children were forced to be quiet while the rest of the family watched TV and that this resulted in them starting school with speech difficulties. NEI> 7 April 1962, p. 9.
33.  Letter from Dorothy Camfield to the TV Times, 2 July 1976, p. 19.
34.  For example, letter from R. E. Row to the TV Times, 20 May 1966, p. 25; and D. Smith of Nottingham in TV World, 7 April 1966.
35.  GJ, 9 July 1956.
36.  O'SuIIivan, 1991, p. 175; Goodman in Morley, 1986, p. 26.
37.  Moores, 1988, p. 36.
38.  Ibid., pp. 33^1, 37.
39.  O'SuIIivan, 1991, pp. 167-71.
40.  Peggy Conroy, NEP, 28 October 1959.
41.  Letter to TV Times, 21 January 1971, p. 53.
42.  TV World, 10 March 1966, p. 22.
43.  TV Times, 20 May 1976, p. 25.
44.  O'SuIIivan, 1991, p. 176.
45.  Letter from Mrs Diane Fulleylove to TV Times, 10 April 1969, p. 55.
46.  7V¥frr&,26Januaryl967,p.20.
47.  McCarthy, 2001.
48.  Nina, 30, bus-driver (RSQ).
49.  Julie, 31, playscheme co-ordinator (KE34).
50.  Many respondents liked to have a drink while watching a film on television. For example, when Sharan (33, nurse/tutor, KE35) watches Sky Box Office, she likes to open a bottle of wine and treat it as a night in. Another respondent claimed that 'If it's sunny outside and if we've got a video on, mum will pull the blinds and we'll sit there in semi-darkness watching the film. It's just like being in the cinema again.' (Joy, 45, occupation unknown, member of Nottingham Tfoung Disabled People, RM20.)
51.  Avery, 1980, pp. 62^f.
52.  Smith, 1950, p. 186. Cited in Buscombe, 1991, p. 201.
53.  Crammond, 1976, p. 273.
54.  Scottish Educational Film Association and Scottish Film Council, 1961, p. 44.
55.  Sheldon, unpublished 1999, p. 4.
56.  Scottish Educational Film Association and Scottish Film Council, 1961, p. 44.
57.  Ibid., pp. 58-9.
r f
II
Negotiating Nostalgia: '■
Modernity, Memory and the Meanings of Place
As we already have seen, not only was the rise of television related to changes in the meanings of the home, but the meanings of the city centre were also changing. However, while these changes certainly made the city centre unappealing to some, they also made it attractive to others. As Joanne Hollows has pointed out, it was specifically in these decaying inner-city areas during the 1960s that the cult movie started to flourish. The image of these places 'worked to confirm the heroic masculinity of its male fans' and their opposition to the supposedly feminine world of domestic consumption associated with the home and the television.1 Furthermore, as Miller and his colleagues point out, attitudes to places are 'related to perceived changes in the local social and cultural fabric'.2 In their study of Wood Green's Shopping City, for example, they found that the supposed 'loss of "community spirit" was frequently related to the radaUsed nature of neighbourhood change due to the influx of people from ethnic minority backgrounds with which the construction of the Shopping City coincided'.3 This chapter will therefore consider how the changing meanings of cinema were also related 'to perceived changes in the local social and cultural fabric', through an analysis of nostalgia for cinema in popular memory and public discourse.
Coming to Terms with Closure: Modernity and Tradition in the Local Press
As we have seen, the local newspapers often devoted a considerable amount of space to reports of cinema openings in the 1930s, sometimes as much as a full page of coverage, and this is an indication of the importance these sites once had for the city's sense of identity. However, the closure of many cinemas also received considerable space, between a half and a full page in most cases, and this space was not simply a result of the local media's need to maximise all local stories as their emotional tone indicates. While a strong sense of civic pride was evident in reports on the opening of cinemas, an equally strong sense of regret can be found in most reports on the closure of cinemas. As we have seen, in the 1920s and 1930s, reports on the opening of cinemas had conveyed a powerful sense of optimism about the future and confidence in the 'progress' that these cinemas were seen to represent. However, the reports of their closure presented a very different attitude to both modernity and these cinemas. While still bound up with notions of civic pride and local identity, these cinemas were seen as representa-
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tives of tradition rather than modernity, and their closure was presented as the tragic destruction of this tradition by a modernity which was now seen as far from benign.
In other words, these news reports express the dialectic of modernity that Marshall Berman so brilliandy captures in the opening of his book, All Thai is Solid Melts Into Air.
To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and our world [but] at the same time threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are.4
As a result, by the time of their closure, these cinemas were no longer seen as symbols of a modernity that brought harmony and order, but as symbols of a dying traditional way of life. They were still viewed just as favourably as they once had been, but now modernity was presented as a destructive force that was represented by the bingo halls, warehouses and supermarkets that were taking over the disused cinema buildings.
The emotive tone found in all the articles is particularly strong in an NEP story of 26 October 1960. This story begins with a discussion of the closing of the Apollo, Berridge Road, but extends to a lament for all the recendy closed cinemas in the city and those still under threat: The Apollo adds its name to the gloomy list of cinemas being made into furniture stores, frozen food depots and warehouses, or waiting gaunt and derelict, to be pulled down and cleared for car parks and petrol stations/5 The elegiac tone is redolent throughout, with much use of highly charged language: 'gloomy', 'gaunt',
Cinemas that once announced their modernity came to be seen as relics of a golden, age.oi tradition and community. The Futurist today, ^&lley Road
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'derelict', 'doom'. Under the subheading, 'Death Roll', the paper also lists other recent cinema casualties and those under threat from closure. This theme is also reproduced with varying degrees of ardour in all the articles about cinema closures. A1963 item on the Windsor Cinema, for example, is headlined, 'Death of Another Cinema',6 while the NEN item on the closure of the Commodore (formerly the Aspley) frequently refers to the 'danger' facing other cinemas.7 ■.
Cinemas had therefore changed their meanings significantly. An article on the demolition of the Astoria, for example, no longer presented this cinema as 'the most up-to-date in the country' as the papers had done on its opening in 1936. By 1994, the cinema represented tradition, decline and folk memory. An article in the NEP at the time referred affectionately to 'Nostalgic film fans' before interviewing local residents who remembered the tuppenny rush, visits with gangs of friends and courting in the double seats at the back.8 The article also recounts the history of the Astoria which was closed in 1975, projecting a sense of nostalgia for the cinema's heyday, coupled with a sense of the tawdriness and tackiness of modern life. The Astoria had previously had an 'imposing and very attractive exterior', 'fin-like corners suggesting just a hint of Egyptian influence' and a 'bold red neon sign',9 but it had been forced to close in 1970 for renovation so that it could 'attract audiences which by now had gone into decline'.10 However, although it reopened the following year 'with the luxury of armchair seating', refurbishment had done little to halt the cinema's decline and, after its final closure as a cinema in 1975, the building became a bingo hall and then a snooker hall. Plans to turn it into a drive-through McDonald's and a car part showroom had failed and eventually led to its final demolition. Its increasing redundancy is also demonstrated by its post-1975 history. At the time of its demolition, The site's future [was] in limbo ... no further application had been submitted.'11
There is no a sense in this article that bingo and snooker were worthy successors to the cinema, or could hope to hold the same place in people's affections. The cinema is presented not just as a building but as the embodiment of a culture and a way of life. The personal accounts of childhood and courting also give a sense of the importance cinema once had as the site for these rites of passage. The demolition of the Astoria is not only meant to represent the destruction of a building but a part of the city's past as it is experienced both collectively and personally.
Indeed, there is a strong sense that the importance of cinema lay in its social and community function as much as, if not more than, in the films that it presented. As we have already observed, cinemas in the city have had far more meanings and functions than merely as places to show films. This is particularly evident in the news reports of the 1950s and 1960s, and can clearly be seen in an article on the closure of the Metropole, Mansfield Road, which makes special mention of the 'flourishing children's film club' that was established there in 1948 and 'whose members [had] put on anything from fancy dress contests to conker championships'.12 As a result, the destruction of cinemas was seen as representative of a loss of community, a loss that was supposedly caused by the motor car as a representative of modernity. The perceived modernity of cinemas in the 1930s was sometimes presented as quaintly old-fashioned, and hence positive,
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through its association with a different period of the car's history. For example, the NEP article on the closing of the Astoria comments on its car park, which had been a feature given special importance in the reports of its opening, in a way that contrasts the significance of the car in the 1930s with that of the car in the present. The car park had been for 'the few people who had wheels in those days, a far cry from the site today as six lanes of traffic roar across the A52 Derby Road'.13
The numerous reports on cinema closures and their emotional tone seem to demonstrate that these places have had particularly deep significance. In order to assess this significance, we compared these reports with the coverage of both the cinema's immediate predecessor in mass entertainment (the music hall) and its immediate successor (the bingo hall). The demise of bingo halls is reported in very different language to that of cinemas. First, coverage of the subject was minimal. A general piece written in 1961 did discuss 'the bingo craze which is the biggest social revolution since television'.14 However, the article comments on a number of halls in a factual rather than emotional account of its popularity. The same factual, unemotional tone was used in the closure of bingo halls. The following excerpt is typical: 'A chain of four bingo clubs - two in the Nottingham area - has shut down because of falling attendances.'15 The only emotive account of the closing of a bingo hall is that concerning the Adelphi Bingo Hall (formerly the Adelphi Cinema) which is reported in the Hucknall Dispatch, and included the line: 'Tears filled some eyes down for the last session at the popular Adelphi Bingo Hall.'16 However, even here, most space is devoted to a personal memoir of the Adelphi Cinema, which had closed down thirty-four years before. An NEP article about the demolition of the Adelphi later in the year also concentrates almost exclusively on the history of the Adelphi Cinema, with only a very few lines on the building's years as a bingo hall.
Press coverage of the music hall was also limited, with only three accounts of halls opening or undergoing refurbishment. This dearth of material when compared to cinema indicates the greater importance of the cinema to Nottingham city life. Accounts of the opening of music halls, like the cinemas, claimed that the buildings were 'in every respect up-to-date',17 and also emphasised their decor and luxury: 'marble mosaic', 'a handsomely appointed waiting room' and 'one of the finest galleries in the country' were all supposed to be in evidence at the Hippodrome.18 However, there is far less sense that these sites were symbols of modernity like the cinema. There are certainly no accounts that suggest that the music halls could be seen as symbols of the city as the Elite cinema was seen on its opening19 or as a 'Sign of National Recovery' as the opening of the Cur-zon was described.20 Particularly noteworthy in terms of these comparisons is that we have found few accounts concerning the closure of music halls. Many halls were converted into cinemas in the early part of the century, and yet there are no nostalgic articles that presented these conversions as a sign of cultural decline, and this is in sharp contrast to the coverage concerning the conversion of cinemas into bingo halls forty years later.
So significant were these cinemas that there was even a debate over whether the council should take over the responsibility for running them. For example, a 1959 article on
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the recently closed Tudor in West Bridgford discussed a petition signed by 945 residents,-which asked for the council to reject an application to demolish the building so that a series of shops and offices could be built on the site. However, the local residents also wanted the council to take over the running of the cinema as a local amenity, presumably in much the same way as it was responsible for other forms of leisure such as swimming pools and libraries. The social significance of the cinema was also emphasised through its relation to the' elderly:
The position of old people was stressed in the letters and petition. The committee was
sympathetic to the general view which regretted that the cinema could not carry on. They particularly sympathised with the old people.
However, it was stressed that the petitioners 'could not prove that the Council could carry on a cinema any more economically than a private undertaking' and that 'a substantial rate subsidy would be needed'.21
Memory and its Meanings: Recalling Cinemagoing
None the less, the focus on the elderly in the above article is telling. If these changing meanings of the cinema were related 'to perceived changes in the local social and cultural fabric', it is hardly surprising that age plays such a crucial role in the distinguishing attitudes to cinemas. As a result, the teenagers that we interviewed largely valued the most modern developments in film consumption, such as the Showcase, Nottingham's local multiplex.22 Others also believed that new technologies such as DVD and the internet would eventually do away with cinema altogether and presented this process positively as progress.23 The elderly, on the other hand, tended to feel most alienated from these developments. Most expressed extreme hostility to the Showcase, and tended to prefer older cinemas such as the Savoy and the Odeon (formerly the Ritz).24 However, even these cinemas were marked by their relationship to progress. Among those who tended to favour the Odeon, there were those who clearly suggested that they had stopped going to the cinema once it was converted into a twin screen in 1965. For these people, this event transformed the building from one with which they felt a connection into one that represented developments from which they felt excluded and to which they were opposed. Thus, while the young generally seemed to regard progress as creative and positive, the elderly seemed to experience it as largely destructive and negative, as a process of loss. One therefore needs to be careful when analysing memories of the past because they are never simply recollections of what once had been. On the contrary, as Lynn Spigel argues:
popular memory is history for the present; it is a mode of historical consciousness that speaks to the concerns and needs of contemporary life. Popular memory is a form of storytelling through which people make sense of their own lives and culture.25
In other words, memories are always reconstructions that tell us as much about perceptions of the present as they do about the past. However, it is this that gives them their
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People who are hostile to recent developments such as the multiplex tend to claim that they prefer the Savoy, Derby Road
value and importance: they not only speak about the past, but also use that past to comment on the present.
As a result, while most of the elderly people that we interviewed viewed cinema as representative of a golden age from which the present was seen as a decline or fall, they reconstructed the positive features of that golden age in different ways. For example, while most of our elderly respondents made it clear that different cinemas had different social significances, and were tied to different kinds of social interaction, they also privileged specific aspects of cinemagoing, depending on their specific feelings of loss and disenchantment in the present.
While most respondents would initially claim that they went to particular cinemas not because of the place images of those cinemas, but simply to see a particular film, when asked about specific cinemas most almost immediately reconstructed an account of their week in which different cinemas were clearly positioned within specific social routines. For example, they might have gone to one local cinema with their family on a Tuesday, another local cinema with a group of friends of the same sex on a Wednesday where they might have encountered and flirted with groups of the opposite sex, yet another local cinema with their best friend on a Friday, and then to a city centre cinema on a Saturday night, where they met a member of the opposite sex for a date.26 Here specific cinemas were clearly seen as appropriate or inappropriate to specific social activities.. There were certain cinemas that one might go to with one's family, and others that one
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might go to with one's friends. The Ritz, on the other hand, seems to have almost universally been favoured as a place one went to when on a date.
However, while cinema may have represented the location for all these different types of social interaction, most respondents associated the cinema with specific forms of social interaction dependent on their own specific feelings of loss. Many, for example, saw cinemas of the past as representing a period of community. One respondent, for instance, remembered the Bonington Cinema where he went as a child, and claimed that everyone knew one another in the cinema. He also recalled one local character, Johnny, for whom the cinema would reserve a specific seat because he was disabled.27 This story conveys a sense of intimacy and community where people not only knew one another but also looked after one another.28
For others, however, the image of community was far less central than that of the cinema as a family event. Indeed, the numerous elderly respondents who stated their preference for the Savoy as a cinema often referred to it as a 'family cinema'.29 What is interesting here is that this phrase works to conflate two different meanings. On the one hand, these respondents often praised the Savoy as the last remaining 'family owned' cinema, where each member of the family has a different role in the organisation - ticket seller, concessions stand, usher, etc. However, this meaning is also conflated with the sense of the cinema as a place where families could feel at home. Ironically, most also stated that when they did go to the cinema now, it was usually when they took their grandchildren to the Odeon or the Showcase.30 None the less, the notion of family is very important here and it represents an image of closeness and intimacy that many felt was missing in their present circumstances. Many lived on their own, their partners deceased, and only saw their children and grandchildren relatively rarely. Indeed, many distinguished between the family when they were younger and the family today, and presented the family of their past as one of closeness and connection as opposed to the family of today which they saw as uncaring and from which they felt excluded.
For others, the fondest memories of the cinema were of going there with friends. Many of these people missed the close bonds of friendship that they associated with their youth, and this relates to a general experience of isolation that was often related to the death of friends or the immobility of themselves or others. One respondent, for example, claimed that up until a few years ago she still went to the cinema regularly with a friend, but that she had to stop when her friend's health had declined significantly and forced her into care.31
One of the most common memories of cinema is, of course, as a place of courting, romance and sexual experimentation.32 Indeed, a large number of people remembered the cinema as either a place of sexual awakening33 or as a place of sexual threat and harassment.34 There were repeated stories about the Moulin Rouge, which many women claimed was occupied by the 'dirty mac brigade'. However, while most women said this was one cinema that they did not frequent, other women clearly did go there,35 although one respondent claimed that she always took a hat pin to see off 'the gropers'.36 The cinema was also associated with more pleasurable romantic and sexual encounters. For
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some, these cinemas evoked memories of partners that were now dead, and placed these relationships back into their idealised early stages. However, for others, these cinemas were not about specific romantic relationships, but rather a period of excitement and vitality, a period that was contrasted with the supposed absence of these features within their present lives. For others, these cinemas clearly evoked an idealised sense of themselves. They saw this period of courting as one in which they were attractive to the opposite sex in a way that they no longer felt themselves to be, but it might also be that this was a time in their lives when the expression of sexual feelings was seen as less incongruous and inappropriate. It is unclear how many remembered this period so intensely because they did not feel that they had the opportunity to express these feelings in the same way in their present.
If people's memories of the cinema differ, it is also the case that specific cinemas have different meanings for different people. Thus, while many female respondents claimed that the Moulin Rouge was frequented by the 'dirty mac brigade', others had very different perceptions of the place. The features that made this cinema sordid and disreputable to many also defined it as a place of distinction for others. One respondent, for example, clearly identified European culture with quality, and praised changes in Nottingham that he believed made it more like Europe, and particularly Brussels. He also talked quite openly of his preference for the Moulin Rouge as a cinema, which he remembered as a place where he saw good foreign films.37 The very qualities that made it seem dirty and seedy to some were precisely the qualities that marked it as a place of distinction for others. As a number of studies have demonstrated, the European art film was often marketed through its sexual content, which was often supposed to signify its adult and serious nature. However, it was these features which also associated it with 'obscenity and perversity'.38 Indeed, as we saw in Part Three, it was this content which Manvell and others valued and led them to oppose censorship, at least for certain audiences. Similarly, the Savoy was seen very differently by different sections of the population. While many elderly respondents stated a preference for the Savoy, which they saw as an old-fashioned, traditional cinema, others saw it as a student hangout from which they felt alienated.
Even the very same feature could acquire markedly different meanings within different social contexts. For example, many elderly respondents complained about the noise in contemporary cinemas.39 Sometimes this referred to the volume of the soundtrack and sometimes the activities of the audience, but in most cases the two were conflated together. However, the meaning of noise frequently slipped and changed. Some regarded noise as a sign of the vulgar and brash present that they contrasted to a more restrained and dignified past, and some even claimed to prefer watching films in the afternoons when it was quieter.40 Others considered noise to be a sign of the shared experience that they thought was missing in contemporary culture. It was a sign of active enjoyment and communal interaction.41 Some even slipped between the two in their comments: they complained about noise but also saw it as essential to a sense of shared experience and atmosphere,42 a sign of the very thing that distinguished cinema from television viewing and defined it as superior.
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Differentiated Activities: the Meanings of Cinemagoing and Television Viewing
As Chapter 10 demonstrated, rather than presenting a straightforward threat to the cinema, television provided a different kind of experience. Of course, this experience offered an alternative to cinema, but only to the extent -ihat any other leisure activity would. In his history of BBC audience research, Silvey therefore refers to Professor Wilbur Schramm's claim that "when TV comes in functionally similar activities will be replaced, whereas functionally different ones will not',43 and he clarifies the meaning of the term 'function' as follows:
The primary function of the nighdy visit to the local may for one man be social and for another the need to quench thirst. One man may garden primarily for exercise and another primarily for the prestige of producing the prize-winning vegetable marrow. Viewing television performs different functions for different people - and for the same person at different times. One child may be glued to the screen because of the need to satisfy an appetite for vicarious excitement; another because he knows he cannot keep his end up when he plays with his peer group.44
As a result, while television may have screened similar types of entertainment, its domestic location made its function quite different to that of the cinema. As we have seen, a night at the cinema was about more than the entertainment viewed and different cinemas served different functions for their audiences. In much the same way, then, television and the cinema were less rivals than alternative experiences that served different functions.
Thus, while Silvey claims that 'the habit of family cinema-going, which was primarily for the entertainment it offered, had a function similar to that of [television] viewing and, as every circuit knows, has shrunk severely since television's advent', he also acknowledges that the location of these different activities also changes their function: 'significantly adolescent cinema-going, the function of which was to provide an escape from the family if not an opportunity for necking in a dark warm environment, has been much more resistant to the inroads of viewing'.45 In other words, television did not offer the same pleasures as cinema within the comfort of one's own home; rather it offered a completely different kind of experience precisely because it was in the home.
As a result, when our respondents were asked whether they preferred watching films on television or at the cinema, and why, we found that cinemagoing and television viewing were evaluated in quite different ways. Many claimed to prefer cinema because of 'the big screen'. Here the preference was for a sense of spectacle with which television is unable to compete, but it was also related to a much more general sense of the difference between television and cinema. Both those who preferred cinema and those who preferred television justified their preference by referring to the cinema as 'overwhelming'.46 Here the pleasures of cinema were related to a sense of the cinema as 'more absorbing than TV,47 as something that demands and controls one's attention. Those respondents who preferred cinema to television therefore claimed to do so because it
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had 'no distractions',48 and allowed one to 'block things out'.49 Morley found that concentrated viewing in the home was often associated with male viewers, precisely because they had a different relationship to the home from women.50 However, the desire for an intense and concentrated experience was not simply the preserve of male respondents. It was often articulated by female respondents who saw a trip to the cinema as a 'night out', a sense of occasion that took them away from the home where they often felt assaulted by numerous different demands and unable to indulge themselves without a feeling of guilt.51 The cinema was therefore seen as a protected and nurturing space closed off from the world outside.52 As one respondent claimed, he felt 'cocooned in the cinema'.53
However, this feeling of guilt also accounts for the exact opposite response. Many respondents, for example, claimed that they preferred television exactly because they could get on with other things at the same time.54 Rather than demanding and controlling their attention, television provided 'freedom' and 'control'; rather than cutting one off from the outside world, television could be fitted in and around other activities; rather than a sense of spectacle and occasion, television provided the pleasures of the 'cosy' and the everyday. People repeatedly explained their preference for television through its association with the 'cosiness' or 'comfort' of the home.35 Thus, while some saw the cinema as a cocoon separated from the outside world, many saw the home as a comparable space, a place of warmth and comfort in which they could 'snuggle up' in security and intimacy.56 Indeed, numerous respondents referred to television viewing as an 'intimate' experience.57
The word 'intimacy' here is particularly interesting and it came up a number of times in connection with both the home and the cinema. On the one hand, certain cinemas were distinguished from others through their supposed 'intimacy'. For example, some contrasted the Odeon and the Savoy to the Showcase by dairning that the former were 'intimate'.58 In these accounts, 'intimacy' not only stood for the respondent's sense of community within, and shared experience with, the audience, but it was also distinguished from the supposedly 'impersonality' of the Showcase in another sense.59 The Showcase's 'impersonality' not only signified a lack of communal or shared experience but was also opposed to the 'personality' of cinemas such as the Savoy and the Odeon. In this way, the 'personality' of these cinemas represented a sense of identity and individuality, which, as we will see in more detail later, was distinguished from the supposedly mass-produced nature of the Showcase experience.
While those who preferred television viewing claimed that it did not require effort, for those who preferred the cinema, the effort was often a vital element of the pleasure. Many people had rituals and saw 'dressing up as part of the experience' of going to the cinema,60 while television viewing was often seen as an opportunity to 'slob out'.61 In other words, part of the pleasure of cinemagoing was as a reclamation of the body as a source of pleasure and identity, while the pleasures of television were often seen as a opportunity to release the body from regimentation and control. However, it was not simply the effort of getting ready that was important. Many others stressed that the-effort of going out was also important, and maintained that travelling to the cinema was part
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of the adventure of cinemagoing.62 Several respondents actually claimed that they used to travel all over Nottingham in order to visit and explore different cinemas.6* Similar findings have also been made in the United States where Janna Jones has shown the ways in which the audience members of the Tampa Theatre actually identified the difficulty involved in getting to that cinema as one of the key features that made their cinemagoing superior to those who visited the more accessible and convenient multiplexes.64
Conclusion
In other words, the activities of film consumption associated with television and the cinema are distinguished by their different locations. The meanings of television viewing are shaped by its domestic setting, while the meanings of cinemagoing are defined through their freedom from the domestic. Alternatively, the meaning of cinemagoing is defined through its association with public space, while the meanings of television viewing are defined as a retreat from the demands of the public.
Notes
1.  Hollows, The Masculinity of Cult', forthcoming.
2.  Miller, Jackson, Thrift, Holbrook and Rowlands, 1998, p. 49.
3.  Ibid., p. 50.
4.  Berman, 1983, p. 15.
5.  NEE 26 October 1960.
6.  NEP, 9 March 1963.
7.  NEN, 11 July 1963.
8.  NEE; 2 February 1994.
9.  Beeston Gazette, 20 May 1980.
10.  NER 2 February 1994.
11.  Ibid.
12.  NEP, 20 October 1973.
13.  NEP, 2 February 1994.
14.  NEP, 29 May 1961.
15.  NEP, 16 January 1961.
16.  Hucknall Dispatch, 28 February 1997.
17.  City Sketches, 1899.
18.  NEN, 3 April 1908.
19.  NDG, 23 August 1921.
20.  NEP, 2 August 1935.
21.  'Council Sorry, But They Can't Run Tudor', NEP, 4 November 1959.
22.  See, for example, Tamjit, 16, student (RMQ); Dalbir, 14, student (RMQ); Subaigh, 11, student (RMQ); Suroop, 10, student (RMQ); Harprit, 18, student (RMQ); Harjot, 10, student (RMQ); Bikrumjit, 14, student (RMQ); and GCSE English Class, 14-15, Minister School, Southwell (KE17).
23.  See, for example, Andrew, 14, student, (KE27); Stefan, 25, unemployed teacher (KE19); and Delma, 40, teacher (KEQ).
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24.  See Chapter 13.
25.  Spigel, 1995, p. 21.
26.  John remembers going with family to certain cinemas, friends to others and his 'young lady' to yet another (mid-60s, retired, RK1). Kath remembers going between four and five times a week before she was married, but she had set nights on Monday, Thursday and Saturday (70, retired, RSQ), Similar patterns were also common among the members of the Bakersfield and Sneinton Co-op Women's Guild (KE20).
27.  John and Julia, mid-60s, retired (RSI).
28.  An article on the closure of the Grand mentioned a woman who had sat in the same seat all her life, and who was offered the seat by the cinema when it closed. GJ, 22 May 1956.
29.  John andJulia(RSl) made special mention of the fact that the Savoy was family run, a feature that distinguished it from other cinemas and made it friendly. At the Savoy, they claimed, people recognised them and said 'hello' as opposed to the city centre and the Showcase, where, it was felt, the staff simply took their money but never even looked at their faces. Michael (58, lecturer, KE9) also believed that the closure of cinemas was due to the destruction of local communities.
30.  These interviews were held before the closure of the Odeon in 2000. Betty (69, retired office worker, KE11), for example, took her grandson to see Star Wars, and most of the women from the Bakersfield and Sneinton Co-op Women's Guild took their grandchildren to see films at these cinemas (KE20).
31.  Iris, 72, retired teacher (61). One respondent remembers cinema as a place where you would arrange to meet up with one's friends (member of the 'Something Different for Women Club', ages ranged between 60 and 75). Another claimed that the cinema evokes memories of security and friendship, qualities that she feels are absent in society today (Barbara, 40, headteacher, KEQ).
32.  Members of the Bestwood Park Women's Club claimed that thinking about cinema brought back memories of courting (age range from 40 to 75, KE31), and this was certainly true for many members of the Bakersfield and Sneinton Co-op Women's Guild, too (KE20).
33.  For example, one respondent claimed that, for her, the most memorable experience associated with cinemagoing was: 'Early discovery of sexual feelings (with partner rather than thro' images on screen!)' Anonymous female, health information advisor, 36 (KEQ). However, while this puts it particularly bluntly, most accounts of courting also make it abundantly clear that, for many, the cinema was a place of sexual experimentation and adventure - which could also tip over into sexual danger.
34.  As we have already seen, stories of women being groped are common (see, for example, Mrs Robey, 60s, retired, RM10), and there were also complaints about flashers (National Council of Women, Nottingham Branch, KE36). However, possibly the most distasteful story is that of the woman who claims that her most memorable experience of cinemagoing was 'watching Jurassic Park while man in next seat masturbated!' (Anonymous female, cleaner, 30, KEQ.)
35.  As we have seen,'one woman even got engaged there (Clifton Women's Wednesday Club, age range from 60 to 80, KE25).
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36.  Member of the 'Somefffing Different for Women Club'. See also Bestwood Park Women's Club (age range 40 to 75, KE31); Joan (a member of Chrysalis, a friendship group for those who have suffered bereavement); Kath, 70, occupation unknown (RMQ).
37.  Ken, 67, retired maths teacher (KE29).
38.  See WilÜnsky, 2000, p. 37; Schaefer, 1994; and Schaefer, 1999.
39.  For example, Sheila claims that she finds the cinema 'often too loud' and that, as a result, she 'ends up with a headache' (60, lecturer, RM19).
40.  Many found the town centre 'intimidating', particularly at night (John and Joan, early to mid-60s, retired, RK1). They were not only frightened of mugging (Robert, 64, occupation unknown, RS13) but also of being knocked over by the young who, it was felt, dominated the town centre at night (Anthony, 57, lecturer, RM16). They were frightened partly because the young tended to move around in large groups and at great speed but also because, with brittle bones, the elderly were not only aware that, if knocked over, they were likely to break a bone, but also that such a injury could result in a complete loss of independence thereafter: many old people never become fully mobile again after such an injury (Betty, 69, retired office worker, KE11).
41.  George, for example, recalls: 'Oh, it was murder: "Look out behind you!" "Look over there!" "Go on, get him, get him!" Oh, it was scream anything.' However, this is remembered affectionately, rather than critically (80, occupation unknown, RS15). Similarly, another person remembers that, at the Boulevard, 'everyone would sing during intervals - a happy atmosphere', while another recalls that, even from outside Leno's, *we could hear the kids shouting and screaming' (both members of the Thursday Disabled Club which had about 12 to 14 members of which all but one were aged between 71 and 90, RM13).
42.  This was evident, for example, in the responses of a meeting of the National Council of Women, Nottingham Branch, whose members were aged between 41 and 78 (KE36).
43.  Professor Wilbur Schramm quoted in Silvey, 1974, p. 156.
44.  Ibid., p. 157.
45.  Ibid.
46.  Catherine, 25, student (RMQ).
47.  Ibid.
48.  Brian, 46, probation officer (KE16).
49.  Melanie, 34, information officer (RM7).
50.  See Chapter 1 but also Morley, 1986.
51.  For example, Jo claimed that watching films on television was a waste of time and that she felt guilty about the jobs that needed doing (22, receptionist, KEl).
52.  Margaret, for example, claimed that she preferred cinemagoing to watching films on television or video because it 'is dedicated time' where she is 'not tempted to do anything else e.g. household chores' (45, occupation unknown, KEQ).
53.  Simon, 23, trainee solicitor (KE18).
54.  Stuart, 32, student (KEQ).
55.  Whitegate Mothers and Toddlers Group (KE13); and Bestwood Park Women's Club (age range40to75,KE31).
56.  Stephanie, age unknown, occupation unknown (RMQ).
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57.  Rowena, 56, housewife (RMQ).
58.  Barbara, 40, headteacher (KEQ). One respondent even claimed to 'love' the Savoy (Helen, 40, project worker, RM18).
59.  Catherine, 25, student (RMQ).
60.  Judith, 39, probation officer (RM3).
61.  Phillip, 32, carpenter (RM2).
62.  Marc, 25, student (KE15).
63.  Betty, 69, retired (KE14).
64.  Jones, 2001.
IT
Part Five
Beyond Cinema: Film Consumption in the Information Age