G-Movies Sell Better
by Ted Baehr and Tom Snyder
Issue 105 -April 9, 2008

The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the six major movie studios in Hollywood and helps them crush their competition, was very excited recently about touting Hollywood’s record-breaking year in 2007.

Figures released by the MPAA showed that worldwide box office increased 4.9% from $25.47 billion in 2006 to $26.72 billion in 2007. In those totals, the domestic box office also set a record, increasing 5.4% to $9.629 billion.

What the MPAA didn’t tell the press, however, is that total admissions in the United States and Canada increased only 0.3% in 2007, to 1.4 billion tickets sold. Also, that number represents a whopping 12% decline from contemporary Hollywood’s best year in 2002, when it sold 1.599 billion tickets!

Furthermore, the MPAA forgot to mention that annual movie admissions for the domestic box office in 2007 are still 29% below the 1.98 billion admissions in the middle 1960s, before the six major Hollywood studios’ immoral ratings system (G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17) came into being and alienated family audiences and mainstream moviegoers.

Considering that the population in the United States and Canada has increased from about 210 million people to more than 336 million people, the number of ticket sales in North America has continued to drop – nearly 56% – since 1966, from 9.43 tickets sold per person to only about 4.17 tickets sold per person!!!

The situation is even worse if you go back to 1946, when the Golden Age of Hollywood was in its heyday, when 55% of the American population, about 78 million people, went to the movies every week, for about 4.0 billion ticket sales. Today, only between 27% and 30% of the American people go to movies every week.

Also in 1946, for example, Americans bought about 4.07 billion tickets at about 42 cents per ticket, according to the L.A. Times.

In other words, the amount of movie admissions today has declined 66%, or two-thirds, since the heights of the Golden Age, when Mr. Smith Went to Washington and when George Bailey learned It’s a Wonderful Life!

Of course, since MOVIEGUIDE® started its Annual Faith & Values Awards Gala and Report to the Entertainment Industry in 1993, annual ticket sales for Hollywood have increased 27.4%. That’s because Hollywood is making many more movies marketed to families, many more family-friendly with traditional moral values based on the Bible, and many more movies with Christian content. In fact, since we started the Faith & Values Awards Gala, and its Epiphany Prizes for Inspiring Movies & TV that lead to a greater love and understanding of God, the number of movies with positive Christian content has nearly quadrupled!

Furthermore, recent studies by us and other organizations, including The Nielsen Co., show that G-rated movies with no sex, no foul language, no explicit nudity, and no graphic violence make at least three to five times more money per movie at the box office than R-rated movies!

Thus, it has become ever more clear that, if Hollywood wants to make more money, it needs to ditch the cumbersome MPAA content ratings, stop making R-rated and NC-17 movies altogether, clean up the content of the remaining movies, and go back to the Code of Decency which fueled Hollywood’s Golden Age from 1933 to 1966, when God and His values ruled the box office, instead of the values of senile hedonists like Hugh Hefner and angry radical atheists like Michael Moore.

Contrary to what many journalists and other pundits say, sex, obscenity and graphic violence usually don’t sell that well.

Most moviegoers, and most non-moviegoers for that matter, want to see Good conquer evil, Truth triumph over falsehood, Justice prevail over injustice, and Beauty overcome ugliness. They also would like to take their whole family, including their grandparents, to the movies more often.

It’s time for Hollywood to give the public what it really wants!

Dr. Ted Baehr is the founder and Publisher of Movieguide® and Chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission, as well as a noted critic, educator, lecturer, and media pundit. Dr. Tom Snyder is managing editor of Movieguide