The previous post reminded me of something I meant to write. A couple of week ago the student newspaper The Gazette did a story on the USC's budget for next year. The VP-Finance was quoted as saying Western Film's ticket sales were 'plummeting' and our snack bar sales were 'skyrocketing'. I'm not sure where he got this from. I think it may be from looking at the numbers from the wrong part of the year. Our ticket sales were down because of weak product in the fall however when the Feb month end numbers came out a few days after the article we were within $300 of the ticket sales at the end of Feb last year. Snack bar sales are up compared to previous years and a higher percentage of ticket sales but aren't skyrocketing. Our snack bar sales are up for a couple of reasons. The new products such as Slush and Ice Cream and sales to non patrons of the movies. This is possible because of the permanent concession stand that opened in the last fiscal year. We couldn't sell things like Slush before because we didn't have room and the whole concessions stand got rolled away over a tile floor each night. A slush machine wouldn't stand up to that kind of abuse for long.
I hate when The Gazette pulls stuff like that out. It's not good for people to think a place is having problems. I always remember what happened to the old New Yorker Theatre. As soon as word got out it was for sale attendance dropped a lot. It's not like anything had actually changed, the owner wanted to retire. I guess people thought something was wrong with it or something.
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