By Jim McCarthy Jan 6, 2009 0 comments

Happy Black Tuesday!

Here’s a story that Broadway insiders are talking about a lot:

“More than a dozen Broadway plays and musicals—almost half of the current lineup—will close by the end of January, among them Hairspray, Young Frankenstein, and Boeing-Boeing.”

The  Daily Beast rather dramatically says “Half of Broadway Goes Dark,” which is true as far as it goes, but it implies that shows won’t be replacing the closings.  I suppose that remains to be seen.

Broadway has some real problems (and some real strengths, for sure), but the one that I think about most often is that it is now dependent on the tourist economy and, to a large extent, on weakness in the dollar, which allows Europeans to come to NYC for a relatively inexpensive vacation.  That’s gone the other way lately, so it’s hurting.

These are externalities and they can’t be controlled by Broadway.  What they can (and should be trying to) control is how well they are doing with the local and near-local audience.  It may be a little unfair to say they’ve neglected that group, but I’ll take that risk:  the allure of big busloads of German (or Kansan or North Carolianian) tourists pulling up in front of the theatre and solving all sales problems have made the industry forget about people who could decide on a whim come to mid-town for a night of theatre.

Live 2.0 is, ultimately, not about tourists.  It’s about building a following and having a personal relationship with customers.  There are some, notably Susan Lee who invented and runs Audience Rewards, who are trying and many others who are talking about relationships with customers, but it takes more.

Broadway puts too much stock in the importance of its real estate and not enough in the value of its ticket buyers.  That’s a formula for degrading the importance of the institution in the long run.

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