Tino Ballio And Robert Ray's Analysis Of The Movie

The Elusive Audience:
Comparing Tino Ballio and Robert Ray’s Examination of the Moviegoing Audience on the 1950s
By Justin Daering

Between 1948 when the Paramount decision was made, and 1969 when the last of the majors was bought out by a conglomerate, the structure of the film industry underwent its most drastic alteration since its inception, and a prolonged period of economic struggle and uncertainty. Two film historians, Robert Ray and Tino Balio, have created causal accounts of this change. Both authors agree that one of the most significant causal factors in the economic downfall of Hollywood, and its subsequent need to change to survive, was the audience’s loss of interest in traditional Hollywood fare. Each author however
Balio focuses on the external changes, or changes in the lifestyle of the average American, an explanation that promotes a simple attrition in the quantity of films viewed by the regular person. Contrarily, Ray is more interested in the changes in the way that Americans received the movies, and as his title suggests, this explanation promotes a belief in the average film viewer’s disillusionment in the movies themselves, not the activity of seeing them. As a direct result of these different casual emphases, each author must look for the industry’s reactions in different places. While Balio’s beliefs about the declining audience lead him to examine exhibition changes that were made to regain the audience, Ray’s beliefs guide him towards changes in the production of films, to better cater towards “modern”
It is quite likely that Balio recognizes that there was a change in film content, and it would be hard for Ray to deny that a change in exhibition was taking place. However, because of the motivations on which each of them focuses as to why the film audience declined at this time, they are locked into looking at the reactions of different parts of the industry. Because Balio places the impetus for changing habits in the changing lifestyle of the American, and not their changing taste, it would not follow from his argument to say that film content changed as a result, for if they were not disenchanted, but merely busy with other things, then a change in the content would have no effect on their patronage, and thus Balio must look to the exhibitors to explain how the industry reacted and brought back its patrons. Similarly, Ray, having placed the audience’s motivation to stop watching films in an actual disinterest in their content, could certainly make no case that by changing exhibition methods, they could be drawn back into the