Carmike Cinemas is the 4th largest cinema circuit in the USA, although it is considerably smaller than Regal or AMC.
In their annual report of last year they give the following information out of 50 million ticket sales.
$6.85 Average admission per patron
$3.69 Film exhibition costs
$4.20 Other theater operating costs
Resulting in an average loss of $1.05 per ticket
From concession sales the Carmike corporation makes up the above loss, pays for the cost of the candy, general and administrative expenses (front office expenses),severance agreement charges, depreciation and amortization, loss on sale of property and equipment, impairment of long-lived assets.
Now the knowledge of what the film exhibition costs are compared to average admission doesn't make people insane. It doesn't mean that they run around screaming that they have to pay $6.85 while the studio only gets $3.69 per film. They realize that a business has overhead, and the candy sales are what pays the front office, the other business expenses and makes the company profitable.
Why would it make any real difference if a cable company revealed their costs to the networks over the last 10 years? Perhaps a summary cost, and a per cable channel for the top 3 channels and the broadcast station retransmission fees. I don't think they would suffer any damage to their business,
The advantage is that it might make some customers sympathetic to the cost of providing cable service if they see how much syndication fees increase every year.
I have seen estimate usually between $25 and $40 per customer made by independent advisors as to the cost per TV household.
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