Dartmouth students will receive a half-price discount on movie tickets at Hanover's Nugget Theatre starting today as part of a new initiative by the Programming Board. The initiative, which will allow students to see movies for $4 after presenting their student IDs at the ticket window, will take the place of Dartmouth Television's movie program that operated for the last two years.
Programming Board decided to create a new program with the Nugget Theatre last summer after its contract with Swank, the company that provides movies to student-run DTV, expired at the end of the spring. After evaluating the DTV program, Programming Board and DTV student leaders concluded that renewing the contract was not in Programming Board's best financial interests.
In the absence of the DTV program, establishing a discount with the Nugget Theatre seemed a sensible replacement, Summer Programming Board Chair Essien Ukanna '08 said.
"We wanted another option that was media-oriented," Ukanna said. "[The Nugget Theatre program was] the best way to fill in the gap from DTV."
Programming Board approached the Nugget Theatre in the hopes of establishing a student discount similar to those many Dartmouth students receive at their home movie theatres, and the two parties eventually agreed on the program now in place.
The DTV movie program formerly bought the licenses to the movies that had been recently released on VHS and DVD from Swank. Because the program's costs had grown to $20,000 per year and student interest remained low, Programming Board decided to look for other ways to allocate this portion of its funding instead of renewing the contract.
"A lot of people didn't know about [the DTV program] and a lot of people just don't watch that much TV," said Ruslan Tovbulatov '09, a member of Programming Board. "The $20,000 was surpassing the actual amount of interest in the program."
Although initial discussions between DTV and Programming Board centered around entering into a shorter contract that provided fewer movies per month, after considering the high costs, the two organizations eventually decided to eliminate the program entirely.
DTV, meanwhile, inspired by the growing success of web sites like YouTube, has changed its focus and is looking into using Internet broadcasts, a process which Programming Board supports.
"Though [Programming Board] is no longer financially responsible for DTV, we hope to maintain our relationship with them and will continue to support their goal of providing original programming," Programming Board Budget Chair Elizabeth Silvey '08 said.
Programming Board, which receives its funding from the Undergraduate Finance Committee, furnishes social events for undergraduate students.
