By Jim McCarthy Feb 8, 2009 0 comments

Live Entertainment and the Recovery

As so often happens, I’m generally with Sandow on this one: an arts ‘bail-out’ is a bad idea.

And if your first reaction to that is to say that “the arts deserve it as much as the bankers,” then my answer is simple:

You’re making my point.  They don’t deserve it either.

For the Live entertainment business, this recession is like a headwind against a boat sailing downriver:  the tide is taking us in the right direction, and the headwind is slowing us down.  Nevertheless, the wind can’t possibly blow us back upstream.

But what will enable us to overcome the headwind?

Innovation.  In fact, we’re devoting the next Edition to that topic, and I’m going to return to it often.  Imagine again our sailing river boat.  How do we re-arrange or re-trim our sails to take advantage of the headwind?  How do we build a little motor or solar panel to give the boat some internal power?

In other words, how do we create more value with what we do so that the headwind is less and less relevant?  That’s the challenge.

Giving the industry to Government to control would be the equivalent of replacing our sailboat with a much, much bigger boat and crew.  But a bigger boat just means slower speed and a higher chance of hitting an iceberg.

Not only that, but this hulking new boat would be under the command of an absentee captain.  Presumably, Quincy Jones’s “Secretary of the Arts.”

And as excited as a lot of people in the arts community about that are today, just remember:  one day, almost certainly within a decade, your party will not have the presidency.  That’s always true, no matter what party you vote for, if you check back on the history of the Presidency changing hands.

Now ask yourself this question:  Imagine the candidate of the opposite party that you like least as President.  Go ahead.  Think of a name.

How do you feel about that person running the Arts and Entertainment as a branch of the government? You had better be comfortable with it if you support this idea, because creating new government jobs like this is a one-way trip.  They never get eliminated.

Personally, there’s no politician alive that I would like to see in that role.

Because I believe in you, the community of artists and entertainers, and I believe in the people buying tickets.

I believe you’ve got more and better ideas for delighting and uplifting an audience than ever and that you’ve got the energy to develop and deliver those ideas.

And I believe, because I’ve seen it proven again and again, that the ticket buying audience will respond.  Mount another faceless, indistinguishable version of Macbeth and it might not work.  Do Fuerzabruta, Avenue Q, Lucha Va Voom, or Wickets and you won’t have trouble finding an audience.  (I don’t mean those shows, but YOUR creation with as much spark, creativity and appeal.)

So our business shouldn’t be asking the pathetic and defeated question:  “Why aren’t we part of the bailout?”

Instead, it should be asking itself this one:  “How can we help lead the recovery?”

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