It's a heck of a good question. All I can find is vague information about "aggregated data from authoritative sources." We can guess what those sources might be (theater chains, film distribution data from studios, etc) but that's not at all definitive.

I hope someone can share more information than I have.

Just did a quick check on this. Interesting. For the sake of scope, I did a quick search for NHL scores.

It's not algo changes, it's philosophy changes. Not sure if this trend falls under this forum umbrella, but it's a new ball of wax.

I don't know whether these companies are trying not to rank, or, more likely, it's a combination of a series of acquisitions and sheer ineptitude. I'm posting some names and links, something we don't generally do, and I'll try in this post to avoid vocabulary that would distort the search very much.

A 7/20/11 post in the Film-Tech film business forum [film-tech.com...] led me to the names of two companies that provide data to most movie information and search sites....

Cinema-Source is apparently the largest such data provider, and you can find the site now at West World Media... [westworldmedia.com...] ...It's a very messy site, so it will take some hunting to get a clear picture of how they operate. Best way to find out is probably to phone them. I gather that theater owners email data to West World in a variety of formats.

The Film-Tech forum post also says that "the other major listing service is NowShowing.com. They feed Fandango, IMDb, and others." That said, there's no site on NowShowing.com, and it doesn't show up in search, and IMDb also lists West World Media as its showtime source.