Cinemas benefited in wartime from the absence of most rival leisure activities, and, in the wake of its victorious conclusion, an all-time peak of 1,635 million admissions was reached in 1946. However, building restrictions meant that new cinemas could not be build in areas of expanding population nor war-damaged ones repaired. A tax dispute, which resulted in Hollywood withholding new films for nine months in 1947-48 and encouraged the hasty production of inferior British pictures, did little harm, but several factors contributed to the slow decline in attendances up to the mid-1950s: the revival of other forms of leisure, the rise in the number of people watching black-and-white BBC Television (especially after the live coverage of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II was watched by half the population in 1952), and the increasing comfort of the home.
Hollywood suffered the impact of television from the late 1940s, much earlier than Britain. Its attempts to fight back with more colour films, 3-D, and wide screens had a beneficial effect in British cinemas until the novelty element wore off. Admissions more than halved between 1956 and 1960, particularly as a result of the regional spread of ITV, which offered a more popular alternative to BBC programmes and highlighted the showing of films, some quite recently made. But the fall in attendances was exacerbated by the reduction in the number of cinemas and by a serious shortage of American movies. Cinema newsreels closed down because they could no longer compete with the immediacy of television. (Most newsreel cinemas survived by showing cartoons or new foreign films or old features.)
Some cinemas were built in new towns, such as Harlow and Hemel Hempstead. Many huge picture palaces were replaced by smaller modern cinemas, primarily included to obtain planning permission for office developments and often tucked away in the basement. The most profitable cinemas were extensively modernised but others were turned over to potentially more lucrative leisure uses, becoming bingo halls, bowling alleys, dance halls, etc. - or sold off to be replaced by supermarkets, petrol stations and office blocks. Still more sat as boarded-up, derelict eyesores, testimony to the big screen's grave decline. From a post-war total of 4,700, the number of British cinemas had declined to 3,050 at the end of 1960, and to 1,971 at the end of 1965.
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/cinemas/sect4.html
| Year | Figure in Millions |
| 1933 | 903,000 |
| 1940 | 1,027,000 |
| 1950 | 1,395,800 |
| 1955 | 1,181,800 |
| 1956 | 1,100,800 |
| 1957 | 915,200 |
| 1958 | 754,700 |
| 1959 | 581,000 |
| 1960 | 500,800 |
| 1965 | 326,600 |
| 1970 | 193,000 |
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