MOVIES OFFER DIVERSION DURING TIMES OF WAR.

Byline: Greg Hernandez Staff Writer

If the 75th Academy Awards ceremonies go off as scheduled tonight, participants will tentatively be walking a fine line between being celebratory and being subdued as they honor last year's best movies just five days into the U.S. war against Iraq.

But if history is any indication, experts believe that Americans will not be at all tentative about continuing their love affair with movies - 2002 was a record year at the box office and for home-video revenue - and should continue heading to their local multiplexes and video stores unabated, experts say.

While people might be glued to their television during the early days of the war, they are likely to also want to seek a respite from the blanket coverage on television.

``Eventually, like anything, it leaves you cold after a while and you are looking for something,'' said Tom Adams, president of Adams Media Research. ``It's a lot like video games: lots of flashing lights and excitement but then you want to see something besides bombs blowing up. That's part of what causes people to go back to old habits of what they like to consume like movies and sports.''

Academy officials were watching on an hour-by-hour basis to decide whether to go forward with tonight's Oscars broadcast but CBS earlier in the week pressed on with its telecast of first-round night games of the annual NCAA basketball tournament. Thursday and Friday afternoon games, however, were carried by ESPN while CBS aired war coverage.

Ratings for the first Thursday matchup were 18 percent lower than last year's first Thursday game. It remains to be seen how the war will affect ratings for the remaining games in the tournament.

Box office activity in the coming weeks will also be among the many consumer spending habits investors and strategists will be closely monitoring to gauge how the war might impact the fragile U.S. economy.

``It is a telling sign over what is going to happen in our economy,'' said Robert Bucksbaum, president of Reel Source Inc., a box office analysis firm.

Experts point to several examples over the past 12 years in which Americans barely changed their movie habits during such events as the Gulf War in 1991, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States and the military action against Afghanistan that followed.

``We saw box office go up after Sept. 11, an attack on our soil. What can be more devastating than that?'' said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office tracker Exhibitor Relations Inc. ``In the wake of that, we ended up with a record-breaking year.''

Immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks, the box office suffered due to people staying close to their television sets for updates and in New York City, where the worst of the attacks occurred, people were unable to get to movie theaters at all. But by the weekend, total ticket sales surpassed the grosses of the same weekend the year before.

``It's a product-driven marketplace,'' Dergarabedian said. ``Good marketing and good movies get people into the theaters and people still go to the movies no matter what is going on in the world.''

``The worst thing for the box office is bad marketing and bad movies, the two things that have always been bad for box office,'' he added. ``The Gulf War is a good example: box office was sustained with 'Home Alone' performing incredibly well. Box office was way up versus the same period the year before.''

As far as home video is concerned, at the time of the 1991 Gulf War, Adams said, there was a ``temporarily serious dip'' as everyone turned on CNN.

``It was a slow year for rentals at the beginning of the year in February, March and April but the end of the year turned out to be strong,'' Adams said. ``In the end, the Gulf War did not turn out to be a down year for video rentals or sales especially after it became clear that it was going to be a quick light show and mop-up. People pretty quickly returned to their habits.''

The current war comes at a time when the home-video industry is enjoying unprecedented popularity due to the increasing widespread adoption of the DVD format by consumers. DVD movies have become far more popular purchase items than VHS versions of films ever were and have driven up industry revenue enormously, with many films grossing more in home video than they did at the box office.

Martin F. Nordin, a professor of communication at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, said the reasons for the enduring popularity of movies in times of war also have to do with part of human nature.

``Human beings are storytelling animals,'' Nordin said. ``We basically make sense of the world around us by telling stories, and movies represent the flashiest way of presenting stories. When we go to movies, we are kind of in the position of voyeur, almost like we are eavesdropping on people's lives. There's something very appealing about it.''

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Photo:

Tourists take pictures along Hollywood Boulevard on Tuesday. Experts say that even during wartime America's love affair with show business continues unabated.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer