Breaking the Studios: Antitrust and the Motion Picture Industry
DEFINITIONS:
Blind-selling – A practice whereby a distributor licenses a feature picture before the exhibitor is afforded an opportunity to view it.
Block-booking – The practice of licensing, or offering for license, one feature, or group of features, upon condition that the exhibitor shall also license another feature or group of features released by the distributor during a given period.
Circuit – A group of more than five theatres controlled by the same person or a group of more than five theatres which combine through a common agent in licensing films.
Clearance – The period of time, usually stipulated in license contracts, which must elapse between runs of the same picture within a particular area or in specified theatres.
Exchange District – An area in which an office is maintained by a distributor for the purpose of soliciting license agreements for the exhibition of its pictures in theatres situated throughout the territory served by the exchange and for the physical distribution of such films throughout this territory.
