NPR's Morning Edition aired a curious segment Monday morning. While audiences have been showing up in droves for the likes of Paul Blart: Mall Cop, they've apparently been immune to the aroma of freshly-popped popcorn as they head to the auditorium.

More than $4 billion has poured into the movie box office so far this year. That's up 12.5 percent from this time a year ago. Though the lagging economy has slowed sales some, Hollywood is still enjoying a good year. But that's not the case at concession stands.

Imagine my surprise. The story goes on to feature Jeff Bock from Exhibitor Relations, saying that, while box office was up strongly this year, concession sales were down as much as 10%. Now, as anyone who know theater owners can tell you, they are not exactly free and easy with revenue data on concessions, good year or bad. So, considering news this bad, I had to find out where Jeff had gotten his data. And it turns out he hadn't.  Gotten data.

He did, however, have an anecdote. He had been told by an exhibitor at ShoWest that concessions were down by the amount he had cited. A couple of other people in the industry had told him concession revenues were flat.  Where they got their data we don't know. Perhaps it was their own company's revenues. Maybe somebody had told someone who told them.

Here's where I get my data. There are five U.S. theater companies that are publicly traded, AMC, Carmike, Cinemark, Marcus and Regal (to be precise, AMC is not publicly traded, but some of its debt is) and must file quarterly statements with the SEC. There you will find, lo and behold, actual revenue figures for box office, concessions and other operations. They tell a very different story than the indifferently-sourced NPR report. The quarterly 10Q and annual 10K SEC filings can be found on the websites of each of the exhibitors named above.

For the first quarter of this year, the five companies show concession revenues up between 5.13% and 8%, which is higher than the box office increase for three of the companies. Those five companies comprise 17,000 of the 38,800 screens in the U.S. and operate in every region of the country, urban and rural. We can, I think, consider their concession numbers fairly representative of the industry as a whole.

The report also noted that box office is up 12.5% year-to-date over last year, which is also incorrect. Major news outlets have consistently gotten this number wrong all year. The real figure is 10.9%. If you account by an  "iindustry year", as Nielsen EDI does, the revenue from the first four days of this year are not counted as 2009 revenue, which leaves us 6.9% ahead of 2008.

The cast of The Big Bang Theory explores the complexities...

 A great article in NATO's former magazine, In Focus, covers the problems and prospects for alcohol service in the cinema.

Meanwhile, Fox Business Channel interviews yours truly about luxury cinema:

And Fox News talks with us about alcohol service:

A Stanford Business School study makes the case that higher concession prices subsidize cheaper ticket prices, making movies more affordable for those who would not be buying concessions anyway.

"The theater owner has two choices. He can make money through admission tickets. Or he can make money through concessions," said UCSC economist Ricard Gil. "If he wants to make money on the ticket, that may deter a lot of people from coming in.

"So instead he charges a higher total price on people who are willing to pay for the whole movie experience," said Gil, an enthusiastic consumer of both movies and snacks. "And he's able to charge a lower price for the guy who can barely afford it."

So next time you're annoyed by somebody slurping his soda a little noisily, or munching his popcorn a bit too crunchily, cut him a little slack. He helped buy your ticket

The L.A. Times features it in an article about movie theaters luring back patrons with luxury, alcohol and adults-only seating. This isn't an entirely new trend, NATO's former magazine covered the trend of alcohol service and cinema eateries (also here) in 2005 and 2006.

What seems to be catching on is the added intangible of an adults-only policy required by alcohol service.

From the Times article:

"This is a little bit of heaven," said Tricia Holman, who works for a technology firm and lives in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Ill. For a $15 ticket on a weekend evening, she said, it's "just me, my husband and the big screen. And no teenagers."

In an attempt to entice grown-ups back to the nation's movie theaters, Florida-based Muvico opened the luxury Rosemont 18 in this Chicago suburb just east of O'Hare International Airport. The theater has a clear goal: to cater to those weary of watching films accompanied by a soundtrack of fussy babies and gossiping teens.

One screen is entirely dedicated to customers old enough to buy a cocktail. Five other screens have all-ages seats on the ground level -- and separate, adults-only balconies reached through the bar inside the theater. Customers can lounge on love seats, eat gourmet concessions such as filet-mignon mini-burgers and sip alcoholic drinks during the movie.

Not all movie-goers are thrilled with the idea: