Film Is Giving Way to TV

(a)

The latest statistics show that the number of people attending cinemas is getting steadily smaller. At the same time, the number of television viewers is growing at almost the same rate.

Experts say that these two trends are connected in three ways. First, over the past few decades television sets have appeared in almost every home. Second, films very quickly become available on video, and can be shown on the TV screen. Third, it is becoming more expensive to make films, and so the prices of cinema seats are rising.

However, this does not mean the death of the movie industry. There will always be people who prefer to go out to see a film. This is because no matter how good a TV film or video is, it can never be as entertaining as a film shown on the “big screen.”

(b)

Film is giving way to TV. According to an investigation made on the number of film-goers and TV-watchers in a ten-year period (1975-1985), at the end of 1985, the number of film-goers declined sharply to about 15 thousand which accounts for only some 20 percent of what in 1975, the heyday of films. This decline, no doubt, owes to the steadily increasing number of TV-watchers in the same decade.

This, I think, indicates the changing pace in our society. Nowadays, people prefer TV to film largely because they have less chance than their older generation to spend two or three hours in a cinema; they prefer a kind of entertainment which is freer, less time-consuming and thus more efficient. TV just meets their need. This is at least partly if not wholly the reason that attributes to the boom of TV in our generation.

Nevertheless, there are still a number of film-fans nowadays. They claim that as a classical art, film is far more enjoyable than TV. Some of them also want to recall the “true-life” which existed in the “good-past”. All in all, film is still a charming kind of art as it used to be.