Adieu, Cinema!
The cinema used to be the most popular recreation in the first half of the 20th century, till 1957, when the television began to show films and plays. If people didn't have to go out to see films or plays, why didn't they stay at home? That's why the cinema declined rapidly as TV became more popular. In 1957, as many as 900,000,000 people went to the cinema, while there were only 400,000,000 people who watched TV. Three years later, only 500,000,000 liked the cinema, while 500,000,000 people watched TV. In 1963, about 300,000,000 cinema-goers to 650,000,000 TV viewers. In the next six years the number of cinemagoers dropped further, while the number of TV viewers continued to rise. In 1974, only 70,000,000 went to the cinema. As many as 800,000,000 people switched to TV.
Nothing can hope to enjoy eternal popularity. Not the cinema. Not TV. Now, in the last years of the 20th century people liked the computer. Nearly everything is available on the Internet, including all for TV. What will happen to the computer, say, in the 2050s, no one knows. Will TV lose out to computer, I wonder?
