The Rise and Fall of Cinema Culture in Punjab — And How TV & Streaming Replaced the Big Screen.

A single table on cinema halls in Punjab captures a profound shift in Pakistan’s entertainment history.

In 1971, Punjab had:
270 cinemas
151,500 total seats

By the early-to-mid 1980s, the sector peaked:
360+ cinemas
210,000+ seats

By 2005, cinemas were down to 249.

But then came a sharp, persistent decline.

When reporting resumed:
2014–15: 67 cinemas
2019–20: 61 cinemas with ~28,000 seats
That’s an 80%+ collapse over 40 years.

The First Big Disruption: Television

The timing isn’t accidental.

The steep decline begins in the late 1980s and 1990s—exactly when:
PTV achieved near-universal reach
VCRs entered urban and later rural homes
Cable TV exploded in the 1990s and early 2000s
Indian channels & dramas captured Pakistani households
Families shifted from going out to staying in
Cinema was no longer the primary entertainment medium.
TV didn’t just offer convenience — it offered variety, privacy, lower cost, and regular supply of content. Entire genres that had once drawn crowds to cinemas moved to television.

The Second Big Disruption: Smartphones & Streaming

Whatever remained of the cinema-going culture faced its second major blow after 2010:
Rise of smartphones
Cheap mobile data
YouTube becoming Pakistan’s #1 entertainment platform
Netflix, Amazon Prime, Zee5, Tamasha, Tapmad, etc.
Social media becoming the primary screen
Personalized, on-demand content replacing communal viewing
By the time multiplexes started opening in select malls, the audience had already shifted to digital-first behavior.

Even the 2013–2018 “film revival” couldn’t reverse the structural decline because the infrastructure had already collapsed—and the screen had permanently moved to the pocket.

A Cultural Infrastructure That Didn’t Keep Up

A province that once had 200,000 cinema seats now has barely 28,000.