Comment to 30 Day from NATO

COMMENTS OF THE
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF THEATRE OWNERS

84 FR 48379, OMB Number 1190-0019

Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed eCollection; eComments Requested;
Extension Without Change of a Currently Approved Collection. Requirement That Movie
Theaters Provide Notice as to the Availability of Closed Movie Captioning and Audio
Description

John Fithian, President & CEO
Esther Baruh, Director, Government Relations
Jackie Brenneman, General Counsel and Director of Industry Relations
National Association of Theatre Owners
1705 N Street NW
Washington, DC 20036

The National Association of Theatre Owners (“NATO”) respectfully submits this comment letter
in response to the Department of Justice’s (“Department”) information collection notice
(“notice”), 84 FR 48379, OMB Number 1190-0019, regarding the requirement for digital movie
theaters to provide notice of closed captioning and audio description availability, per Title III of
the Americans with Disabilities Act, 28 CFR 36.303(g). This comment aims to evaluate the
accuracy of the Department’s estimate of the burden of the proposed collection of information.
In its notice, the Department estimates that individual movie theater companies will spend 10
minutes per week, or 8.7 hours per year, to comply with this requirement, and that the total
number of hours spent by the industry collectively to provide this notice is 15,573 annually. The
Department also suggests that the amount of time it will take a movie theater to comply with the
notice provision is impacted by the number of movies showing at a theater at any given time, and
that movie theaters update their showtime listings on a weekly basis.
In order to determine if these estimates and suggestions reflect current practices, NATO
distributed a survey to domestic movie theater companies asking theaters how many times per
week they make updates to their showtime listings and how long the updates take. We received
responses from 111 exhibitors representing 2,177 movie theaters. The survey responses suggest
that the Department’s estimates are likely too low, even for theaters with relatively streamlined
processes, and do not account for the complex variables that impact the amount of time theaters
spend to comply with this requirement.
I.

Data Set

89 exhibitors representing 736 movie theaters responded with data points within the survey
ranges.
At the lower limit of the responses, 44 theaters reported making updates once a week at an
average of five minutes per update. At the upper limit of the responses, one theater reported
updating its listings three times per week at an average of 38 minutes per update.
The chart in Figure 1 shows the number of responses received by range of time per update and
the number of times per week that updates are made.
Figure 1.

Number of
responses
52
19
15
3

Range of time per
update
1-10 minutes
11-20 minutes
21-30 minutes
31-45 minutes

Number of times per week that updates are
made
Four or
Once
Twice
Three
more
44
7
1
0
12
7
0
0
9
4
1
1
1
1
1
0

1

In order to calculate the weighted average of time spent per week making updates, we calculated
the total number of minutes spent per week making updates by multiplying the number of times
per week that updates are made by the midpoint of the range (Figures 2A and 2B).
Figure 2A.
Number of times per week that updates are
made
Number
of
responses
52
19
15
3

Range of time
per update

Midpoint of
range

Once

Twice

Three

Four or
more

1-10 minutes
11-20 minutes
21-30 minutes
31-45 minutes

5 minutes
15 minutes
25 minutes
38 minutes

44
12
9
1

7
7
4
1

1
0
1
1

0
0
1
0

The blue boxes represent the exhibitors who reported spending more than 45 minutes per week
making updates. When we looked at that group, we found that the shortest amount of time spent
on weekly updates was 50 minutes (21-30 minutes per update, with a midpoint of 25 minutes,
twice a week) and the longest amount of time spent on weekly updates was 114 minutes (31-45
minutes per update, with a midpoint of 38 minutes, three times a week). 82 minutes is the
midpoint between 50 and 114.
Figure 2B.

Number of minutes
spent per week
making updates

Number of
companies

Midpoint of range

1-10 minutes
11-20 minutes
21-30 minutes
31-45 minutes
46+ minutes

44
19
17
1
8

5 minutes
15 minutes
25 minutes
38 minutes
82 minutes

TOTAL number of
minutes spent per
week making updates
(number of
companies x
midpoint of range)
220
285
425
38
656

The weighted average of time spent per week making updates across the 89 exhibitors who
reported times within the survey ranges was 18 minutes for an individual movie theater
company, 80% more time per week than the Department’s estimate of 10 minutes, for a total of
15.6 hours per year per movie theater company. Employing the Census Bureau’s 2016 estimate
of 1,790 companies owning one or more movie theaters, the annual public burden for disclosing
this information will total 27,924 hours, 79% more time than the Department’s estimate of
15,573 hours.

2

II.

Understanding How Showtimes are Updated

Our survey also received additional responses from 22 exhibitors representing 1,441 theaters that
described a complex showtime listing process, with time per week spent well beyond the survey
ranges described above. These survey responses demonstrated that for many exhibitors, in
practice, the amount of time spent updating showtimes and how frequently they are updated is
subject to many factors, including the size of the company, how many movies are playing in a
given week, and how the film booking process is handled. When considering all the steps
involved in providing notice to the public of closed captioning and audio description availability,
the burden of this requirement likely adds up beyond 18 minutes per week to several hours per
week for an individual movie theater company.
Typically, there are three steps to updating showtimes listings in order to provide notice of
closed captioning and audio description availability to the public:
1. Determining if a feature is available with closed captioning and audio description.
2. Programming closed captioning and audio description information into the film booking
system.
3. Creating and exporting the film schedule.
A. Determining if a title is available with closed captioning and audio description.
Determining if a title is equipped with closed captioning and audio description is the first step in
updating showtime listings to indicate such availability. There is no standard practice for how a
distributor provides such information to exhibitors, and not all distributors consistently provide
accessibility features with their films. As exhibitors by necessity interact with a range of
distributors, either by booking films directly or by using a film booking service, exhibitors must
employ a variety of methods to determine whether a title is equipped with closed captioning and
audio description, including but not limited to:
•
•
•
•
•
•

Learning accessibility features from the file names contained in a digital cinema package
once it is received, ingested into the cinema server, and decrypted (this is the most
common method);
Learning accessibility features from the file names on the “projectionist letter” (also
known as an “ingest letter”) supplied by the digital cinema key provider;
Receiving feature film specifications directly from a film distributor;
Asking distributors for this information directly;
Receiving feature film specifications from a third-party film booker;
Testing the film with closed captioning and audio description devices once a film is
ingested into the projection system.

The research involved can take a company anywhere from a few minutes to an hour per week,
depending on how many titles the company is opening that week and whether the information is
readily available.

3

B. Programming closed captioning and audio description information into the film
booking system.
Programming information about closed captioning and audio description availability into a
company’s film booking system is the next step in the notice process. Different companies
employ different systems for tracking titles to be released and the attributes associated with those
titles, including whether or not the title is available with closed captioning and audio description.
In general, when a title is being released, a company’s film booker (this may be a team of people,
an outside firm, or the owner/operator of the movie theater, depending on the size and structure
of the movie theater company) creates a unique film identification number for the title in the film
booking system. If the film comes in a variety of formats—3D, premium large format, opencaptioned, IMAX, etc.—the booking system will assign additional unique film IDs to each
different format. For each unique film ID, the film booker populates the film booking system
with information such as the rating, the release date, the running time, the genre, and the
accessibility features, including closed captioning and audio description.
Once a title and its associated formats and attributes are listed in the film booking system, and all
the decisions are made about which films will play in a given week, theater companies can move
to the next step of creating film schedules.
C. Creating and exporting the film schedule.
Film schedules are usually created on a weekly basis. Building a film schedule is a complex
process akin to completing a 3D puzzle with many different elements that all need to fit together,
and is subject to technical difficulties and human error. Theaters juggle multiple factors when
creating film schedules in a given week, including but not limited to:
•
•
•
•
•

How many different titles will play in the theater that week, including any special “event”
cinema playing only a few times;
The terms negotiated with the distributors regarding how many showtimes a specific title
will have that week and how many screens it will play on;
A title’s box office performance in previous weeks;
The variety of formats offered, such as 3D or premium large format screens, for example;
and
Whether schedules are created by a central film team or individually by theater managers.

The more screens a theater company operates and the more titles a theater company is playing in
a given week, the longer and more complicated the process to build the film schedule.
While film schedules are typically built on a weekly basis, theaters may update showtime listings
more than once a week for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to:
•
•

Adding or eliminating showtimes;
Moving a title from one auditorium to another; or

4

•

Receiving updates about whether a title that is already scheduled is equipped with
accessibility features.

Once a film schedule is created, it is uploaded to a theater’s point of sale system, typically at the
beginning of the week for showtimes beginning on Thursday or Friday, although schedules may
be set earlier for movies that have pre-sales. Theaters may also add or eliminate showtimes on a
rolling basis depending on a movie’s performance and the demand for tickets.
As to how long it takes to update a film schedule to indicate closed captioning and audio
description availability for the titles playing that week, that will depend on whether a company’s
point of sale system automatically pulls a title’s attributes from the booking system, or if the
person creating the film schedule needs to manually select the attributes as each title is
scheduled. If the point of sale system automatically populates the attributes, there is no
additional time involved; if the attributes are selected manually, this can be a time-consuming
process that depends on the number of films and showtimes playing at an individual theater. The
point of sale system then exports the film schedule to various places showtimes are listed, such
as the theater’s website, mobile application, box office signage, or ticketing kiosks.
III.

Calculating the Total Public Burden

Our survey responses—both from the exhibitors who were able to provide data within the survey
ranges and from those whose processes exceeded the survey ranges—strongly suggest that the
total public burden exceeds the Department’s estimate of 10 minutes per week, or 8.7 hours per
year, for individual movie theater companies to comply with this requirement. While our survey
showed that the average theater company spends 18 minutes per week (15.6 hours per year)
making showtime updates to indicate closed captioning and audio description availability, when
considering all the steps involved in providing notice to the public of closed captioning and
audio description availability, the burden of this requirement likely adds up to tens or possibly
hundreds of hours per week for an individual movie theater company and tens or hundreds of
thousands of hours across the industry annually.
###

5