ABSTRACT
The cinema, like all things, will die in due course. But the distant future is the province of the crystal readers and it is not intended to invade it. To fix a limit we might take 1970 as our time horizon. In effect this chapter will only be concerned with the implications for the future of developments which are already under way and whose influence can be appraised, albeit very imprecisely, from existing data. The topics to be discussed include increasing incomes, improved housing, heavier hire-purchase commitments, the competition of consumer durable goods, the demographic ‘bulge’ and, of course, more television.
