The relationship between different distribution channels for movies: some lessons from the case of free television

In the movie industry habit, the demand of exploitation windows next to theatres is usually related to the success in cinemas, which is assumed to orient subsequent consumption among audience.Using a data base made of 1035 movies broadcast in peak time by the six main Italian networks during the period 1993-2002, we regress movies' tv audience outcome on several independent variables as the attendance in cinemas, movie genre, country of production, temporal gap between tv and theatres, average share of the tv network on which the movie is broadcast in the transmission year.Results show a statistically significant positive relation between the success in cinemas and tv audience, nevertheless the regression prove a far more powerful positive relation with the average share of the tv network on which the movie is broadcast. In particular movies that had a scanty success in cinemas reach high audience performance if broadcast on hi-share tv networks