Hill Day
2002 Review
NATO Exhibitors Descend
Upon Nation's Lawmakers
By Jonathan Yarowsky
NATO Washington Counsel
NATO members
in Washington, D.C. for the association's annual board of directors
meeting took to Capitol Hill May 8 to meet directly with their representatives
in Congress. This year, over 40 NATO members met with their Representatives,
Senators or their staffs to share valuable information about the
exhibition industry.
Our message
was as simple as it was powerful: that the exhibition industry is
part and parcel of the communities they serve. To this end, we focused
our Hill visits on educating Members and staff on our efforts regarding
movie rating compliance, the minimum wage and our response to the
terrorist attacks of September 11th. Keeping the community theme,
NATO members told their representatives that:
1) as part of
the local community, the exhibition industry is committed to the
12-point plan NATO adopted in the fall of 2000 and continues to
work diligently to ensure that the theatre movie viewing experience
is a safe one for all theatre patrons;
2) minimum wage
proposals, if not carefully structured, could have a detrimental
effect on the industry and may, in fact, lead to a reduction in
jobs and job opportunities for many of the young workforce entrants
who often receive this first paid work in the American economy;
and
3) as part of
the American community, we too tried to do our part in providing
relief to victims of the terrorist attacks –- first by devoting
a full day's receipts to the Red Cross – an effort that raised
over $6 million – and second, by working within our industry,
with the studios, and with the White House to create our "Spirit
of America" trailer that ran soon after the attacks.
I am happy to
report – and those of you who had meetings on Capitol Hill
can hopefully attest to this fact, as well – that our message
was well received. Soon after the Hill visits occurred, we heard
from a number of staff members and members of Congress that NATO
representatives (not the lobbyists!) were impressive in their grasp
of the issues and the power of their presentation.
To highlight
just two of these visits, we had very positive meetings with the
offices of Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate
Governmental Affairs Committee, and Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wis.),
chairman of the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee. These two
senators not only chair bodies with jurisdiction over several issues
critically important to exhibitors, but they also have taken the
entertainment industry to task in the past, including the exhibition
industry. As you are aware, Lieberman has been at the forefront
of exhorting our industry to make substantial progress in improving
our rating enforcement efforts. For the first time since the release
of the first FTC report on violence in the entertainment industry,
his staff acknowledged that, while not completely satisfied with
our efforts, the exhibition industry was in fact taking its responsibilities
seriously through the adoption and implementation of the 12-point
plan.
Kohl has joined
Lieberman in the effort to bring about improvements in the treatment
of violent content by all sectors of the entertainment industry.
NATO representatives visited Senator Kohl's staff and had an excellent
meeting as they described the intense efforts of theatre owners
in Wisconsin and around the nation to "self-regulate"
pursuant to the comprehensive NATO 12-point plan. Keeping these
lines of communications is an essential part of being effective
in the Washington policy arena - and NATO Hill Day made a significant
contribution to that process.
Our job now
is to build upon the lines of communications that have been established.
As we continue to implement our 12-point, we need to be sure that
our Members of Congress know we are working diligently to ensure
that movies and movie theatres will always be a valued part of Americana.
And after all, as community members ourselves, we can do no less.
