Explain That!

Dear Editor,
    I totally agree with the letter May 31 telling how annoying it is to find a piece about an event, but there’s no address given for where the event takes place ["Feedback: Very Annoying," May 31]. I have greatly reduced my attendance at movies simply because the Chronicle no longer has that two-page spread showing titles, locations, and times of virtually every movie in Austin. If movie sales are down, I wonder how to explain that. Hmmm…

   Editor Kim Jones responds: Hi Mary. I love movies too much to shoulder the blame for bad ticket sales. (They should make better movies!) There are several reasons we stopped running this information in print – including the amount of pages it required, the amount of work it took to format and proofread, and the extra demands it was putting on our small staff during our busiest time on press days. But mostly it's because the showtimes were wrong. Most movie theatres adjust their screening schedules every day, while others haven't 100% locked their film slate by the time our paper goes to press Wednesday evenings. That meant, in the old days and despite our best efforts, we were regularly printing inaccurate, outdated information in the paper. The QR code we now print every week on our film page takes you directly to our showtimes online, which I personally update every single morning (weekends too!) to ensure you're getting accurate, up-to-date information.