The once ubiquitous white backlit boards with black letters at movie theaters that announced the show timings and other details of the films showing are fading away. The announcement of movie show timings on mobile devices, "glossy movie posters, life-size
cut-outs and other publicity material” have led to the decline of these ‘readographs,’ according to a report in The Indian Express of March 3, 2017. "Only a handful (of theaters) continue to maintain them, including Regal (pictured), Sterling and Liberty in South Bombay and Chitra in Dadar,” continues the report, while Metro and New Excelsior have done away with these letter boards. Three of the four, Regal (Sidhwas), Sterling (Tatas) and Chitra (Mehtas) are Parsi owned.
"When we fix the board to announce new releases, it feels like we are contributing to the publicity of a film,” according to Babu Gaikwad, 55-year-old staffer at the Regal Cinema who awaits Friday releases despite being "no film buff.” Thursday nights are different for Gaikwad, who begins to remove the letters 20 minutes after the last show starts, sometimes with many people gathered to see the exercise. Depending on the length of the film title, staffers try to put in as much information about "show timings, language of the film and its certification” on the letter boards. At Sterling, the task begins at 10.30 p.m. on Thursdays and takes "between 30 minutes to two hours to complete the work depending on the number of shows and movie titles,” a staffer at the multiplex is quoted.