News and Culture

Here’s a snippet of a press release from Regal Entertainment Group, by far Portland’s biggest movie theater operator :

“Regal Entertainment Group theatres participating in the Guest Response System invite selected patrons to carry a paging device with them into the auditorium. One patron may participate for each of the theatre’s auditoriums and for each movie showtime. The Guest Response device is a hand-held pager with four buttons. Each button alerts local management of a different problem such as: sound, picture, piracy or other disturbance. When the patron pushes a button, a message goes to a pager worn by a manager which tells them the nature of the concern, and in which auditorium.”

So far, the system is available in 114 theaters nationwide, including the following in the Portland area:

CASCADE STADIUM 16
BRIDGEPORT VILLAGE STADIUM 18 + IMAX
LLOYD CENTER 10
LLOYD MALL 8
DIVISION STREET STADIUM 13

Honestly, this seems like a great idea to me. And yet great things can always be better. Instead of a pager, how about a remote control? Think of how many awful films could be improved by simply pressing “PICTURE” and having the screen go black. Or pressing “SOUND” and watching the movie silent. Or pressing “PIRACY” and turning off the latest Johnny Depp cash cow entirely. As for the “OTHER DISTURBANCE” button, I imagine it applies to Regal’s loathsome pre-show advertising, “The 2wenty,” along with gratuitous use of slow motion or Will Ferrell.

Of course, I would trade all of this convenience for ushers wearing those little pillbox hats.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Culture, Screen, Spotted, Story Forum, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.