[Chat] Tom Kiefaber on WCBM

[Emil Volcheck]

Hello, neighbors,

I was lucky and managed to catch part of an interview with Tom
Kiefaber, owner of the Senator theater, on WCBM's Tom Marr Show.  In
case you hadn't heard, the Senator is saved!  It got enough donations
to pull through and avoid the auction.

A caller asked why if the Senator is getting so many donations, why he
doesn't make it a nonprofit.  Kiefaber said he hears that suggestion a
lot.  He says there is a misunderstanding about nonprofit status.  If
the Senator were to become nonprofit, it could no longer show
first-run movies.  He says a number of old theaters that closed were
reopened by a "Friends of ..." nonprofit organization and show only
older movies.

I've heard that a nonprofit can't compete head-on with for-profit
businesses, because otherwise the tax benefits that a nonprofit
enjoys would make for unfair competition.  Kathleen tells me that's
one reason why her organization, the House Rabbit Society, can sell
discount supplies only to its members.  If the HRS were to sell
to the public, then it would be competing with for-profit retail
stores, which wouldn't be allowed under the HRS nonprofit status.

Kiefaber went on to say that the Senator does have nonprofit
educational activities, like showing movies to school children as part
of an educational program.  There either already is or soon will be a
nonprofit partner organization to the Senator to which you can make
deductible contributions that will go to support the educational
activities.  He said this will indirectly help the Senator's bottom
line by bringing in more viewers.

A caller asked about why the Senator doesn't have more arts films.
Kiefaber said that "clearance" contracts are part of the reason for
this.  A "clearance" is an agreement that one theater has with a
distributor to disallow other movies from being shown at another
theater within the same region.  Kiefaber said that for 12 years since
the General Cinema in Towson opened, the Senator could never show any
movie that was playing on any screen of the Towson GC.  He said he
knows that The Charles is a "sacred cow", but the fact is that The
Charles uses clearance agreements to ensure that only it can show the
arts films that it gets.  He says that a Landmark theater is going to
open in the Inner Harbor later this year, and that he suspects The
Charles will experience the problem of clearances from the other side.

This part of the discussion also went into how clearance agreements
are a major reason why the Senator has had a lot of difficulty over
the years.  Kiefaber says that clearance agreements are an
anti-competitive business practice that were developed by chain
cinemas to drive traditional single-screen theaters out of business by
depriving them of a variety of movies to screen.  He said that
when people saw the old cinemas going out of business, they assumed
that it was economic Darwinism, that the old cinemas just couldn't
compete.  In fact, it was death by asphyxiation.

A caller asked whether the Senator could get more movies by asking
further in advance.  Kiefaber said he asked to get Little Miss
Sunshine far in advance (I think he said two months before
distribution was announced) and that he still couldn't get it.

Kiefaber was asked if the Senator will still show old movies.  He said
that they missed doing it this year, because of the financial
difficulties.  But they will go back to running 1939-style movie
nights where you can see "Casablanca" or "It's a Wonderful Life" for a
quarter.  Kiefaber says the other night, they put a film can in the
lobby of the Senator to collect contributions for the SOS fund.  He
said he felt like George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life" because so
many people were throwing in money and checks.

--Emil


-- 
Emil Volcheck
volcheck at acm.org
http://acm.org/~volcheck