National Association of Theater Owners

The National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) is a trade organization based in the United States whose members are the owners of movie theaters. Most major theater chains are members, as are many independent theater operators; collectively, they account for the operation of over 32,000 motion picture screens in all 50 U.S. states and 81 other countries.

NATO was founded in 1965 by the merger of the largest movie theater trade organizations, the Theater Owners of America and the Allied States Association of Motion Picture Exhibitors.

The long-running official magazine of NATO is Boxoffice; between 2001 and 2007, they also published In Focus.

As the motion picture industry became larger, movie production companies began consolidating and controlling distribution. The largest producer, Famous Players-Lasky, joined and later merged with the largest distributor, Paramount (eventually becoming Paramount Pictures), and together they began block-booking in 1917, forcing theaters to buy mediocre films to get the good ones. Theaters banded together to bargain for better pricing, with 26 of the largest combining into First National Exhibitors Circuit—which went on to become a producer and distributor in its own right, before being bought by Warner Bros. By 1921, Paramount already owned 300 theaters, and other producers were catching up. Studios soon contracted with each other to keep first-runs inside the affiliated network, using this access to coerce independents into selling out.

In 1921, the first predecessor of NATO was founded, the largely affiliated Motion Picture Theater Owners of America (MPTOA), soon followed by the independent Allied States Association of Motion Picture Exhibitors (Allied), Unaffiliated Independent Motion Picture Exhibitors of America, National Independent Theatre Exhibitors, and more, to demand better pricing and access to first-runs. Unlike the others, the MPTOA embraced affiliated theaters, and soon became the largest organization.

During World War II, many theaters joined the new War Activities Committee, after the war becoming the Theatre Activities Committee and soon American Theatre Association (ATA), which strongly supported the antitrust case against the Big Five. A plan to merge with MPTOA, which strongly supported the studios, ran into friction, with many affiliated theaters leaving the ATA over its stance; conversely Allied, the largest purely-independent group, refused to join over the presence of affiliates. The merger went ahead in 1947, minus affiliates of Loews, RKO, and Warner Bros., and they became the Theater Owners of America (TOA) with about 10,000 theaters.

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