. But that’s not all Fithian has had his hands in at NATO, his work with the org going back to his legal consultant days 30 years ago. Fithian officially leaves NATO on May 1, 2023. Here’s our convo with him.JOHN FITHIAN: When I was first recruited as outside counsel to come on full time, there were doubts among the board members of NATO that I would stay long enough with the job to have an impact. That I’d be here for a few years and leave.
On the Washington side, which actually during my role as outside counsel, and continued after I came on board full-time, was the desire to regulate violent media, which not only is a massive violation of the First Amendment that’s hugely bad for the business.
The cost to make a film print and distribute it to theaters was very expensive: $2K-$3K per print to get that whole process done. In exhibition, we said not yet. We need two things: We need open standards that will promote operability in these systems, and also make sure that the quality level that we give our patrons is as good or better in digital than in film. Because at the genesis of digital technology, it was inferior film. So we wanted to wait until it was as good as or better.
The third piece was helping our companies stay alive as viable entities. That took a number of paths. Lots of people know about the grant program established by Congress to help the mid-size and smaller exhibitors. Several billion dollars to sustain them, but we also worked on really important tax benefits that helped our larger companies as well as smaller companies, and we also lobbied across the country state governments to also provide grants to exhibitors of all sizes and tax benefits.