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  3. Past and Present of the Movie Industry A)The beginnings of the movie industry can be traced back to the 1800’s, developing much

Past and Present of the Movie Industry A)The beginnings of the movie industry can be traced back to the 1800’s, developing much

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问题                     Past and Present of the Movie Industry
A)The beginnings of the movie industry can be traced back to the 1800’s, developing much later than other art forms, such as music and painting. The first motion picture exhibition, which opened in the early 1900’s, was called the "nickelodeon theater". Admission was only 5 cents, and this attracted a large audience to watch movies as a source of entertainment. These early theaters laid the foundation for the movie industry’s expansion and growing popularity.
B)In the early stages of the movie industry, the majority of the United States’ movie houses were situated in small towns and city neighborhoods. As in any industry, there were major players that were not only responsible for exhibiting films, but were also leaders in producing and distributing them. Some of the key companies included Paramount, Warner Bros., R. K. 0., Loews(MGM), and Fox(which later became Twentieth Century Fox). It is surprising to note that although these companies were considered the treme de la creme(精英)of the movie industry, they only dominated approximately 20% of the country’s movie theaters. This meant that numerous other smaller theaters had substantial market share in the movie industry as well. A few of the smaller independently owned theaters decided to consolidate during the 1930’s to gain more power in dealing with film distributors, but the idea of consolidating was not fully realized until the invention of the television.
C)Although only 14,000 homes owned a television during the 1940’s, it still had a negative impact on movie houses across the country. As more households bought television sets, ticket sales decreased substantially. In an effort to drum up revenue during the 1950’s, the Cinerama(which included a curved screen wrapped around the entire theater to "engulf the audience)and 3-D movies were introduced. Over time, however, the increasing popularity of the television ultimately dominated. By the 1960’s, movie theaters had lost 60% of their average weekly attendance and more than half of the 20,000 theaters that began operations in the 1940’s were forced to close down. These losses became detrimental to the movie industry due to the inability to recover funds invested in the theater house and other sunk costs.
D)By the 1970’s, the movie industry was profiting again. Instead of the television acting as a substitute form of entertainment, it was used as a national advertising medium that promoted weekly movies and show times. Within the next few years, multi-screen operations in suburban shopping malls were built, indicating that these publicizing techniques were a great success.
E)In the following decades, many theater companies established themselves in the growing industry. One of the prominent companies on the East Coast is Loews Cineplex Entertainment Corporation. This corporation is the result from a merger between Sony Corporation’s Loews Theaters Exhibition Group and Cineplex Odeon Corporation.
F)Loews Theaters was the first commercial motion picture exhibitor in North America. Its operations began in 1904, when Marcus Loew established a "nickelodeon" in a rented room above a penny arcade(走廊)store in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1924, he merged Metro, a silent movie production company, with The Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer Pictures to form, Metro Goldwyn Mayer(MGM). After the merger, Loews showed films produced by MGM until 1959, when an anti-trust ruling forced studios to give up control of theaters, constricting their focus to production of films. Following this merger, Loews changed owners twice before Sony Corporation acquired it in 1989.
G)The other counterpart in this merger is Cineplex Odeon, based in Toronto, Canada. The firm, founded in 1979, was an integrated entertainment company that became involved in exhibition and distribution of motion pictures. Besides distribution of motion pictures, it also owned other operations, including a major film processing laboratory and a post-production sound facility. Garth Drabinsky started Cineplex with an 18-screen theater in the basement of a Toronto shopping center. It performed well, but also incurred debt, which led to The Bronfman Group investing in the company. Cineplex then bought Canadian Odeon theaters in 1985, changing its name to Cineplex Odeon. Within the next few years, Cineplex Odeon encountered financial difficulties. By 1996, it sustained net losses totaling $317 million dollars of long-term debt, as reported by the Securities and Exchange Commission filings. In fact, Alien Karp(CEO of Cineplex Odeon)stated that the firm "was certainly a candidate for bankruptcy". The distressed company was in dire need of financial assistance and managed to stay afloat through a merger with the financially stable Sony’s Loews Theater Exhibition Group.
H)The proposed merger was horizontal in nature and was expected to bring forth many benefits to Sony and Cineplex Odeon. Realizing that Cineplex Odeon had undervalued assets that were reflected in their low stock prices, Sony Corporation agreed to alleviate Cineplex Odeon from the heavy debt, which was leftover from former management.
I)According to Lawrence Ruisi, who was appointed the CEO of Loews Cineplex Entertainment, the combination of the companies would produce an establishment with an easily manageable debt load, giving it "capacity for growth". Furthermore, Loews Cineplex would be financially stronger than each of the separate companies. Sony was also expected to gain long-term advantages from the merger. At that time, it had only 1,000 screens in 135 theaters in the U.S., while Cineplex had 1,600 screens in the U.S. and Canada. Therefore, if the merger took place, Sony would increase its market share in key cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Seattle and Houston. Together, the companies would create strong competition for Carmike Cinemas Inc., which was known as the "WalMart of the theater industry", operating 500 theaters in small U.S. towns, and also acting as the primary competition for Loews Cineplex.
In the early stages of the movie industry, the key movie companies only had a small portion of market share.
选项
答案B
解析 根据题干中的In the early stages of the movie industry将本题出处定位于B)段。该段第4句中的thesecompanies是指上句中提到的key companies，即主要的电影公司。尽管那些主要的电影公司被看作是电影业中的精英，他们却只掌握着这个城市20％的电影院，即在电影业发展初期，主要的电影公司只占有很少一部分的市场份额。题干是对此的同义转述。
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大学英语四级

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