My understanding of business is pretty simplistic, I’ll be the first to admit that. I don’t understand this pattern I see in the business of buying and selling movies. The pattern is this: those who love movies the most are pushed aside for those who are moderate to minimal movie watchers.

The latest example was brought to my attention by Kim Voynar at Cinematical. In her post, Landmark Theaters axes discount cards, she laments the discontinuation of Landmark Theater’s Discount Card (buy a block of 5 tickets for $30). They dropped the card in favor of more complex and expensive alternatives. Alternatives not created for people like Kim who watch a heckuva lot of movies, people who are looking to love and be loved by their movie providers. Now, giving credit where credit is due, the indomitable Mark Cuban came across her post and had the Discount Card reinstated. But the debacle was another notch in the belt for wandering, misunderstood movie lovers.

In the October issue of Fast Company, CEO of Netflix Reed Hastings put a ham-fisted spin on why their heavy users-avid movie watchers-get less friendly treatment over light movie watchers. Basically, when given the choice of two customers wanting one movie, Netflix will ship it to the customer who watches less. In essence, taking advantage of the avid movie watcher’s loyalty, not rewarding it.

The handwriting on the wall was there way before that. Everybody I know who subscribes to Netflix watches films like they’re Crack. They need their Netflix because they tapped out the local Blockbuster years ago. But guess who Netflix gears their advertising toward? Thirty-something couples with children. Why? Because those people have the least amount of time to watch a movie. They’re perfect for Netflix because every day that a DVD sits on your kitchen counter unopened, unwatched is money in Netflix pocket. So their most loving customers get treated like red-headed stepchildren while they schmooze peeps who want to watch The Fantastic 4.

It reminds me of how my sister used to ditch family night in favor of some friend she just met. A month later, the friend would be gone and guess who was listening to my sister whine about what a jerk that girl was. Yep. We were there. Always. It’s crap. If I drink 50 Cokes a day, I want Coke to stick my face on their trucks this holiday season. I don’t want them to come to me and say, “Hey. Can you stop drinking so much Coke so that this Pepsi guy over here can have one and maybe change his mind?”

No! Netflix I made you! I am The Monster you’ve created, Dr. Frankenstein, and now you want to shut me up in the basement while you watch Shall We Dance with your pleasantly moderate wife. Sure, you’ve won all of these customer service awards because you serviced the mob, but not the people who love you. Come on! If Blockbuster ever gets their act together and robs you of your wishy-washy movie watchers, I’m one of the people who will be there to catch your head before it hits the ground.

Geez. I really went off there. Maybe it needs to become our next statement of What We Believe at Spout, but we believe that building more love for films is not counter intuitive to building a business on consuming film.