When's the last time you left the house to go to the movies instead of just plopping down on the couch and streaming something? Hollywood was hopeful coming into this summer that the sequels and blockbusters would draw people back to the theaters in droves. Well, it's after Labor Day, and the numbers are in.

“Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio took a read through the data with Abraham Ravid, finance professor at Yeshiva University. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

David Brancaccio: I've been reading that there was this, I don't know [about] mantra, but a line floating around the movie business. It was something like, “Survive until ‘25.” Well, here we are, 2025. What are you seeing? I mean, we're going to the theaters, but we're not flocking en masse, really, are we?

Abraham Ravid: No, we're not. And I'm afraid, at least, as I read the numbers, we will not be flocking back to the theater anytime soon. Basically, there's been a secular decline in movie attendance in the last few decades. So people don't go to the movies as much as they used to. Doesn't mean they don't consume movies, it just means there are other ways to consume movies, rather than just, you know, getting a babysitter, finding parking and going to the theater at specific times, rather than streaming it whenever they find it convenient to watch the movie.

Brancaccio: Yeah, we could chew on some of the factors involved here. I mean, some is that people are lost in their phone screens all the time. But speaking of screens, I just looked it up: You can buy right now, Professor, a 55-inch flat-screen, 4K-resolution-screen TV for less than $300. You can kind of simulate the theatrical experience for not all that much money.

Ravid: I do better than that, David. I have 100-inch screen, but not TV screen, and a projector, and I put it in the basement, and you can basically have the same experience as a small movie theater. And, by the way, if you look at the stocks of the remaining theater chains, the market is not very optimistic about the future of movie theaters.

Brancaccio: So you're seeing some new thinking when it comes to the economic models that guide the streaming side of this?

Ravid: So I think the best model would basically be similar to moviegoing. In other words, when you watch something on streaming, you pay for it, and, in that way, there's basically a way to quantify how much money you're making. So the creative team can get residuals, can get percentages, and also the companies, the streaming companies, could understand how much money this makes. If you don't charge for anything, you just have subscriptions, very hard to know what's the economic value of any content that you do. On the other hand, people should pay a subscription for streaming sports and news, because this is content that's always new and keeps coming in.