[…] For much of the past decade, independent distributors have dominated the awards game. In many cases, these specialty films have played in limited runs during the holidays to stay out of the way of big studio titles, waiting until January and beyond …read more […]

I think that the maturation of the Internet and the rise of social media, along with evolving electronic media devices, has spread the youth market across multiple platforms. Netflix. YouTube. Tablets. Web series. Kickstarter. Instagram. Kids and hipsters now move around like caribou herds. But audience members from my generation (80s babies) going backward still look to the local theater for a legitimate experience. So I would say that older viewers are definitely becoming more important for those traditional mediums of film and TV.

Interesting counterpoint to this piece by AO Scott about evolution of cinema: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/magazine/the-big-picture-strikes-back.html?ref=magazine&_r=0