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Abstract
This article assesses the impact of television ownership on cinema attendance in post-war Northern Ireland. It downplays a monocausal relationship between cinema and television, and emphasises the range of social, economic and political factors that led to cinema closures. While the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II acted as a catalyst for television ownership, it did not fundamentally alter patterns of cinema attendance. This research counters claims that cinema exhibitors were unresponsive to population shifts and examines the relatively large number of cinemas that opened in Northern Ireland in the 1950s. It then examines the impact of commercial television and documents the reasons for cinema closures in Northern Ireland’s two largest cities: Belfast and Derry.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Sean O’Connell, Stuart Hanson, Mark Benson and Conor Campbell for their comments and suggestions on drafts of this article. I am very grateful to Lorraine Barry, who generously created the map of Northern Ireland included in this work.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Dyja, ed. Film and Television Handbook, 39.
2 Ibid., 39.
3 Moran, Armchair Nation, 115.
4 Spraos, Decline of the Cinema.
5 For instance, see Docherty et al., The Last Picture Show? and Hanson, Cinema Exhibition in Britain.
6 Doyle, “The Geography of Cinemagoing,” 59–71.
7 For instance, see Griffith, The Cinema and Cinema-Going in Scotland, Jancovich et al., The Place of the Audience and Miskell, A Social History of the Cinema in Wales.
8 Rockett, Film Exhibition and Distribution.
9 Kinematograph Year Book 1958, 409–14; Kinematograph and Television Year Book 1963, 353–56.
10 Joe Moran claims that, following the introduction of UTV in 1959, there were 90,000 television sets in the Irish Republic and a ‘feature of the skyline in Irish towns was the multitude of especially tall aerials erected to pick up the distant signals of British transmitters’. Moran, Armchair Nation, 129.
11 Rockett, Film Exhibition and Distribution, 461.
12 Cathcart, BBC in Northern Ireland and Savage, Television and Irish Society, 318–82.
13 Manning, “Post-War Cinema-Going,” 539–55.
14 Excise Duty Branch, Records of Entertainments Duty, Ministry of Finance, FIN/15/6/A-D, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast.
15 The oral history testimony is drawn from the author’s interviews with twenty residents of Northern Ireland born between 1925 and 1950. All participants were required to sign consent forms and ethical approval was received from Queen’s University Belfast’s Research Ethics Committee. These thematic, semi-structured interviews focused on the social background of the participants, cinema-going practices, film preferences, leisure habits and the wider social history of post-war Northern Ireland. For further information on the use of ethnographic research in cinema history, see Kuhn, Biltereyst and Meers, “Memories of Cinemagoing and Film Experience,” 3–16.
16 Biltereyst, Lotze and Meers, “Triangulation in historical audience research,” 690–715.
17 Dyja, ed. Film and Television Handbook, 39.
18 Reduction in rate of Entertainments Duty, 9 June 1958, Ministry of Finance, FIN/15/6/A/12, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast.
19 Moran, Armchair Nation, 74–75.
20 BBC Handbook 1955, 159.
21 Digest of Statistics Northern Ireland 1961, 61.
22 BBC Handbook 1955, 61.
23 Field and Neill, New Housing Estates in Belfast, 43.
24 Belfast Newsletter, June 3, 1953.
25 McVeigh, Jean. Interview by author. Belfast, April 2, 2014.
26 McIlwaine, David. Interview by author. Cultra, County Down, July 9, 2015.
27 Belfast Telegraph, May 29, 1953.
28 Minutes of the General Purposes and Finance Committee, Belfast Corporation, March 18, 1953, McClay Library, Queen’s University Belfast.
29 Belfast Telegraph, June 4, 1953.
30 James Chapman, “A Queen is Crowned,” 82.
31 Belfast Telegraph, July 8, 1959.
32 Belfast Telegraph, June 6, 1953.
33 Belfast Telegraph, June 15, 1953.
34 Northern Whig, June 26, 1953.
35 Belfast Telegraph, July 17, 1953.
36 Northern Whig, June 9, 1953.
37 The ABC News, August 1953.
38 Cork Examiner, June 11, 1953.
39 Belfast Telegraph, June 10, 1953.
40 Belfast Telegraph, June 3, 1953; Kinematograph Weekly, June 11, 1953.
41 Sunday Independent, June 14, 1953.
42 Reduction in rate of Entertainments Duty, 9 June 1958, Ministry of Finance, FIN/15/6/A/12, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast.
43 Savage, Television and Irish Society, 325. For information on the small number of programmes produced for BBC Northern Ireland, see Hill, Cinema and Northern Ireland, 52–60.
44 Belfast Telegraph, October 27, 1952.
45 Spraos, Decline of the Cinema.
46 For further details on wartime restrictions, see Farmer, Cinemagoing in Wartime Britain.
47 Kinematograph Year Book 1958, 509; Kinematograph & Television Year Book 1963, 445.
48 Docherty et al, The Last Picture Show?, 28.
49 Dyja, ed. Film and Television Handbook, 39.
50 Reduction in rate of Entertainments Duty, 9 June 1958, Ministry of Finance, FIN/15/6/A/12, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast.
51 Belfast Telegraph, December 3, 1956.
52 Rockett, Film Exhibition and Distribution. 139.
53 Belfast Telegraph, January 28 1959; April 17 1959.
54 Government of Northern Ireland, Census of Population, xxvii.
55 Belfast News-Letter, March 28, 1955.
56 Banbridge Chronicle, December 14, 1955.
57 Ibid.
58 Entertainments Duty weekly returns, Ministry of Finance, FIN/15/6/C/2/65, 122, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast.
59 Entertainments Duty weekly returns, Ministry of Finance, FIN/15/6/C/2/113, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast.
60 Kinematograph Weekly, September 27, 1956.
61 Belfast Telegraph, August 31, 1956.
62 Kinematograph Weekly, September 6, 1956.
63 Belfast Telegraph, April 21, 1961.
64 Belfast Telegraph, December 5, 1955.
65 Kinematograph Weekly, April 4, 1957.
66 Belfast Telegraph, October 2, 1959.
67 Kinematograph Weekly, December 26, 1957.
68 Spence, Noel. Interview by author. Comber, County Down, March 26, 2014.
69 Kinematograph Weekly, December 26, 1957.
70 Hanson, Cinema Exhibition in Britain, 94–99.
71 Kinematograph Weekly, July 10, 1958.
72 Belfast Telegraph, December 17, 1958.
73 Belfast Telegraph, June 4, 1956; June 11, 1956.
74 Kinematograph Weekly, July 5, 1956.
75 For changes in rates of Entertainments Duty, see Rockett, Film Exhibition and Distribution, 125–40. In Northern Ireland, receipts from Entertainments Duty paid by cinemas fell from £640,246 in 1956–57 to £140,988 in 1960–61. Payments ceased after 27 May 1961. Digest of Statistics Northern Ireland 1961, 74.
76 BBC Handbook 1957, 200; BBC Handbook 1961, 172.
77 Kinematograph Year Book 1950, 465–70; Kinematograph Year Book 1958, 409–14.
78 Spraos, Decline of the Cinema, p. 34.
79 Irish Independent, June 1, 1957.
80 Kinematograph Weekly, January 2, 1958.
81 Belfast Telegraph, February 14, 1958.
82 Belfast Telegraph, October 31, 1959.
83 Belfast Telegraph, October 5, 1960; Digest of Statistics Northern Ireland 1961, 74.
84 Savage, Television and Irish Society, 335–6.
85 Belfast Telegraph, December 12, 1961.
86 ITV 1963: A Comprehensive Guide to Independent Television, 135.
87 Belfast Telegraph, May 16, 1960.
88 Kinematograph Weekly, October 20, 1960.
89 Kinematograph Weekly, June 15 1961.
90 Kinematograph Weekly, October 11, 1962; December 13, 1962.
91 Londonerry Sentinel, December 12, 1957.
92 BBC Handbook 1958, 214; BBC Handbook 1961, 172.
93 Kinematograph Weekly, June 9, 1960.
94 Londonderry Sentinel, August 26, 1959.
95 Belfast Telegraph, October 5, 1960.
96 Kinematograph Weekly, October 18, 1961.
97 Belfast Telegraph, October 5, 1960.
98 Campbell, Norman. Interview by author, Belfast, June 4, 2014.
99 McDonaugh, Margaret. Belfast, May 18, 2015.
100 Belfast Telegraph, September 14, 1960.
101 Kinematograph Weekly, March 1 1962.
102 Kinematograph Year Book 1958, 212.
103 Belfast Telegraph, April 12, 1958.
104 Ideal Kinema, February 8, 1962.
105 Derry Journal, May 1, 1959.
106 Belfast Telegraph, November 18, 1960.
107 Ideal Kinema, February 8, 1962.
108 Belfast Telegraph, September 28, 1961.
109 Kinematograph Weekly, October 12, 1961.
110 Derry Journal, February 2, 1962.
111 Londonderry Sentinel, February 21, 1962.
112 Docherty et al, The Last Picture Show, 23–29.
113 Derry Journal, February 23, 1962.
114 For instance, see Thissen and Zimmermans, eds. Cinema Beyond the City.
115 Kinematograph Weekly, November 11, 1962.
116 Irish Independent, August 5, 1963.