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STOP PAY TV: Remember this 1960’s campaign ???
posted by
ArchStanton007
on
February 9, 2007 at 7:40 am
Was the “Stop Pay TV” campaign run by TV networks, or theater chains as well? I remember seeing a standee for it in the late 1960’s at a local General Cinema theater and possibly some of the larger newspaper ads also mentioned it. Somebody on this site mentioned seeing the phrase on a NYC United Artists marquee. A petition drive may also have existed in the participating theaters.
Anybody have more details please ?
Thank You and stay warm at your local movie theater.
Comments (13)
I remember seeing the advertising for it at my neighborhood drive-in theater. It was run by the theater chains, and it involved the showing of an on-screen ad, and there was a petition that the movie-going public could sign.
It was never seen in Canadian theatres as the biggest chain, Famous Players had an pay-tv system called International Telemeter. It was in use 1959-1966 in the Minco bay area of Toronto. This system eventully became Rogers.
The Save Free TV trailer is available on one of the Something Weird Video trailer compilations titled “Hey Folks, It’s Intermission Time”. I forget which one but you can ask at http://www.somethingweird.com The direct URL for the series is at View link
I definitely remember the UA Oasis having it on the marquee.
The Something Weird version is not the full version of “Stop Pay TV”—The full version (which even has Dracula & Frankenstein) is on a DVD from Elite called “Drive-In Discs Vol 3: I Bury The Living/The Hand”. Worth checking out.
I remember the “Stop Pay-TV” campaign in Brooklyn, NY around 1965-66. In the NYC area the Pay-TV they were so afraid of was cable TV, which was in the process of being built in Manhattan. Cable TV didn’t arrive in the other 4 boroughs until the 1980s.
I think this was aimed less at cable than at proposed over-the-air scrambled TV systems. Los Angeles eventually got two of these, ON TV and SelecTV.
The local Loew’s had the phrase slapped on their marque for a month and ran an ad.
Remember the “stop blind bidding” ad? They even asked you to sign a petition in the lobby before you left. The ad was from NATO and was pretty poorly done. It featured a couple buying a car before they even saw it, on the word of the salesman. The open curtain revealed a beat up something or other, then compared the purchase to what theatres went through to book movies.
We had the “Stop Pay TV” campaign on the late 60s at General Cinema in Cleveland – a standee in the lobby with a card table with a petition on it for people to sign. I think NATO was behind it.
In the Chicago area from 1981-1985 we had ON-TV (WSNS-Channel 44) and Spectrum (WFYN- Channel 66 before WGBO).
O.K.
Never heard of it,most of us growing up in the sixties,as kids never heard of cable.by the time I got in the business Cable,certainly Video were nothing anyone at Plitt theatres seem to worry about.On the weekends our theatres were full with it petering out by the last show Sunday evening.Most of the stuff I see on HBO and Showtime have nothing to do with movies,so what about a ban?Ban Nurse Jackie? Fine with me.
Blind bidding was a totally different issue where theater owners had to competitively bid for movies that had not been screened for them.