Entertainment and reading
Multi-SKU non-CPI basket: US average movie ticket annual (NATO 1999-2024, continued by The Numbers gross/admissions for 2024+ — their 2024 figures match to the cent) + FCC Cable Expanded Basic monthly (2000-2011) + Netflix US Standard plan monthly (2014+). Cable + Netflix were recategorized from `communications` at v1.0.10 per CEX 2000 taxonomy; the ticket continuation was added at data tag v1.0.11.
Sources
Precedence ladder for entertainment and reading. Lower precedence wins where multiple sources cover the same period. The engine walks the ladder per period with chain-link rescale at source transitions.
| Precedence | Source | Series ID | Cadence | Geography |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | nato_tickets NATO US average movie ticket annual (1999-2024). NATO rebranded to Cinema United (Mar 2025) and stopped publishing the annual figure; series terminates 2024-12 and is continued by `the_numbers_us_avg_ticket_price`. |
nato_us_avg_ticket_price | — | national |
| 0 | the_numbers_tickets The Numbers US average movie ticket annual (gross / admissions). Source-continuation of the NATO ticket series for 2024+ (its 2024 = $11.31 matches the final NATO figure to the cent). 2024 is retained as the chain-link overlap anchor so the NATO -> The Numbers handoff at 2024-12/2025-01 carries the real ticket move. Added basket v1.0.11; see Substitution Log. |
the_numbers_us_avg_ticket_price | — | national |
| 0 | household_subscription FCC Cable Expanded Basic monthly rate (pre-streaming era 2000-2011); recategorized from `communications` to `entertainment` at v1.0.10 per CEX taxonomy |
cable_fcc_expanded_basic_monthly | — | national |
| 0 | household_subscription Netflix Standard monthly subscription (streaming era 2014+); recategorized from `communications` to `entertainment` at v1.0.10 |
netflix_us_standard_monthly | — | national |
Weight across archetypes
How entertainment and reading is weighted in each of the 10 published archetypes. Sorted by weight, highest first. National Average is the headline citation surface.
| Archetype | Weight | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Income — Highest Quintile | 9.7353% | View archetype → |
| Homeowner | 8.3701% | View archetype → |
| Income — Fourth Quintile | 8.1997% | View archetype → |
| Working Parent | 7.9102% | View archetype → |
| National Average | 7.5216% | View archetype → |
| Income — Middle Quintile | 6.8765% | View archetype → |
| Retiree | 6.7301% | View archetype → |
| Income — Second Quintile | 5.8358% | View archetype → |
| Income — Lowest Quintile | 5.5533% | View archetype → |
| Renter | 5.4965% | View archetype → |
Substitution history
Substitution log entries that touched this stratum. Each entry
bumps the basket version and is reproducible from observations
tagged with their basket_version.
2026-05-30 — Movie-ticket series continued: NATO → The Numbers
Version: data tag 1.0.10 → 1.0.11
What changed. The entertainment stratum's movie-ticket SKU gained a continuation source. NATO rebranded to Cinema United (Mar 2025) and stopped publishing the annual US average ticket price, so the NATO series ends at 2024. The Numbers (the-numbers.com) computes the same quantity by the same method — total box-office gross ÷ admissions — and its 2024 figure ($11.31) matches NATO's final figure to the cent. It is wired in as its own parallel series (2024 overlap anchor + 2025 = $11.96), and the chain-link engine splices NATO → The Numbers automatically across the 2024/2025 boundary.
Why. With NATO dead after 2024 and cable ending in 2011, entertainment was 100% Netflix for 2025 — so the whole stratum's 2025 reading was the Netflix January price hike (+16%), a single-SKU over-weighting artifact. Restoring a real theatrical-ticket price gives 2025+ a representative streaming + theatrical blend. No BLS CPI is involved; non-CPI share stays 100%.
Effect on headline. Entertainment's 2024→2025 move drops from +16.1% (Netflix-only) to +12.3% (blended). Long-run decay is essentially unchanged (3.55 → 3.54%/yr — one annual SKU over 25 years); the trailing-12 rate corrects from 3.29%/yr to 2.95%/yr. Surviving rows were re-stamped basket_version 1.0.10 → 1.0.11 (values unchanged); the new ticket rows were ingested at 1.0.11. Strata count stays 15.
Methodology
See the basket page for all 20 strata and the per-stratum source map. The methodology page covers the load-bearing pillars including the rules around source-precedence ladders, chain-link splicing at source transitions, and the no-fabricated-data invariant.