I think it’s just a function of the fact that 18-25 year olds go out. They’re generally at a stage in their life were they do things like hang out with friends and go on dates. By the time they get to 25, a lot of people are married and have kids and are staying home.
That may contribute, but I think it has much more to do with the fact that there are over 3x as many people in the 18-25 demographic (60 million) as there are in the older Gen X demographic (17 million).
There have been about 4 million births per year in the U.S. for decades. So there are around 32 million people aged 18 to 25 plus a small additional amount for immigration.
You can define Generation X is a whole bunch of ways, but most them give it a 15-year span. So they’re the ones who number around 60 million, plus immigration minus a greater number of deaths since they’re older.
No matter how you do the counting, though, Gen X has about twice as many members.
To summarize:
1930 - 1945 2.3 to 2.8 million births per year (includes WWII)
1946 3.47 million (start of Baby Boom)
1957 - 1959 4.3 million
1964 4 million (Baby Boom ends)
1965 3.76 million births
1973 3.14 million (Gen X born)
1980 3.6 million
1990 4.16 million
1990 - 2009 4.0 million
One huge reason is the concession stand.
Teenage boys buy lots of junk food & soda. In some respects, a movie theater is a business designed to sell junk food at high prices to a captive audience.
The real money is in candy and nachos. No fooling.
That’s also why movies aimed at little kids are more profitable for theaters than their box office numbers would indicate.
I give up. How in any way does this support your contentions? Remember? You said: 18-25 = 60 million. Gen X = 17 million. This proves conclusively that your numbers are whack.
Yeah, I think the 17 million is out of wack. Other articles put it at 17% of the total population or about 40 million Gen Xs vs about 60 million Gen Y at 26% of the population.
The point is that there are more of them. I’m not that interested enough to figure out exactly how many at this point.
Ah. Well of course if you redefine your group from people born in half the span of years to include people born in a longer span of years than Generation X, they will indeed number more. Funny how that works.
As I noted above (about ten posts up), exactly that was one of the biggest lessons I took out of film school.
A $3.00 or 4.00 carton of popcorn costs about .05 to make with “butter.” A large soda costs about $.04, and they’ll get nearly $5.00 for it.
That kind of profit doesn’t compare to what they make on ticket sales. In fact, I’ve heard some people say it’s a necessity to make up for distribution fees.
However, subsequent post have made a point (nit-picking aside) that movie theaters and productions were also responding to the prevalence of TV and the baby boom.
Did you see it in 3d? I saw it 3x! I’m 42, btw.
When I worked in a movie theater, we were told that the studios and the theater chain, between them, took all of the money from the ticket sales. The only profit we made was from the concession stand. We were told to push concession sales, to upsell, to sell each family member an individual box of popcorn, push, push, push. Everything I’ve heard and read since working there confirms this theory. This is also why theaters prohibit outside food and drinks.
I think that the multiplexes made a mistake when they started showing all the films in a very short time frame, rather than staggering the show times. As the box office cashier, I would be bored out of my skull* for an hour and a half, and then I’d try to sell tickets for a dozen screens for half an hour, and most of the selling was concentrated into ten minutes. The concession stand cashiers were also hopping for that half hour, while people would get fed up with the line and just go sit in the theater, telling themselves that maybe they’d get something when things died down. Of course, once they sat down, they didn’t go back to get something to eat or drink. The ushers were busy taking tickets and trying to keep the minors out of the R-rated movies, so they couldn’t help out in the concession stand. It was a marvel of inefficiency. And it seems that every multiplex follows this same model. Back when theaters had pinball and video games in them, I’d purposely go in early so that I could play a few games before the movie.
I’d love to see movies in a theater again, but first I’d have to find a movie that I actually want to see, and then I’d have to find a theater with the proper atmosphere.
*For some reason, the manager hated to see anyone reading a book in the box office. I never understood why. I always kept an eye out for potential customers, and put my book down and my smile on when someone approached.
Saw it twice in regular, before I even knew it was in 3-d, then saw it twice in 3-d (would have waited for the DVD except that I wouldnt be able to see it in 3-d ever again unless they release a home 3-d system.)
From a marketing standpoint, that may not necessarily be incorrect. We are looking at people who share similar experiences, outlook, tastes and world view. There is no reason that the span of years for each generation has to be of equal length. IOW, they may figure Gen X is a ten year span of bitter malcontents followed by a 20 year span of ideal target consumers based on whatever focus groups they use.
I also mispoke when I said 18-25 was Gen Y. I believe it’s 15-29 is currently considered Gen Y and 30-45 is considered Gen X. So roughly equal periods of time. Gen Y might even be considered anyone under 30 at this point, in which case that would add a whole lot more people (although many too young to spend money, so irrelevant from a marketing standpoint).
So I will concede to having used sloppy “marketing” stats instead of actual stats.
Generation X began in 1960 or 1961 and ended in 1980 or 1981, roughly, according to generational researchers like Strauss and Howe (they wrote the book Generations). So Gen Xers are roughly 28-49. Generation Y has an end date of anywhere from 1998 to 2001, so Gen Yers are roughly 8-28.
As for size, the 2000 census pegged Gen X at around 84 million, while Gen Y comes in at 81 million.
And if a movie is so good that full screen viewing is so important, it will eventually end up in a revival theater for half the price. (I actually rent it, and take home a projector from my job over the weekend to show it on a white wall.)
I was born in 1962. I was always told that I was a baby boomer, but that never seemed right. Now it seems I’m a Generation Xer, but frankly I’m not sure that seems right either. I think I fall right between the cracks.
Ed
You’re part of an “on-the-cusp” generation, not really belonging to one or the other. I am too, it drives me batty sometimes.
But the seperation between Boomers and X is known as Generation Jones (Generation Jones - Wikipedia) while the seperation between X and Y is known as MTV Generation (MTV Generation - Wikipedia) or Cold Y (Xennials - Wikipedia).
See these are all new to me.
I think the world and technology are changing so rapidly and there is so much information out there that it is becoming more and more difficult to separate people into these generational demographic structures based on age. It reminds me of a Sex and the City episode (my girlfriend makes me watch with her) where the 30-something main characters are looking at a bunch of provocatively dressed teenage girls and ponder “are they trying to dress like us or are we trying to dress like them?”
I can’t believe you admitted to that. 
Stranger
There is no such thing as Generation This or Generation That, other than cubbyholes advertisers try to use to convince their clients that they know what they’re talking about. I can’t believe people treat this advo-speak as though it were some kind of science.
And you can stay awake through this?