Cultural statistics. Film and cinema, 1997:

Fewer are going to the cinema

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Despite a sharp increase in the number of showings of films in the past 10 years, the number of moviegoers at Norwegian cinemas has declined by 1.4 million or almost 12 per cent since 1987. From 1996 to 1997 audiences sank by five per cent.

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Cinema attendance totalled 10.9 million in 1997, an average of 2.5 visits per resident. Cinemas ran almost 216,000 showings of altogether 21,000 titles, of which barely nine per cent were Norwegian.

The number of shows has increased by about 29 per cent compared to 1987, although the number of showings declined by almost 2,200, or one per cent, from 1996 to 1997. Average audience per showing in 1997 was 51. Compared to 1987 this is a decline of 25, or about 33 per cent.

Norway had a total of 396 cinema auditoriums in 1997, 287 municipal and 109 private. The number of rural community cinema sites totalled 235.

New Statistics

Cultural statistics. Film and cinema, 1997.
Statistics are published every year in the Weekly Bulletin of Statistics. For more information, contact: vera.thrane@ssb.no, tel. +47 62 88 52 57, or thorstein.ouren@ssb.no, tel. +47 62 88 52 71.

Weekly Bulletin issue no. 25, 1998