Take It From People Who Know What a Flop Is

If you live in New York, I guess you don’t need me to tell you that sometimes the New York Post sounds like it’s written for characters in the movie Idiocracy.

But really,

“B’way Summer a Flop, Eyes Star $alvation“?

(Btw, guys, the Internet doesn’t have character limits.  You can just spell out Broadway.)

Here’s the story: ticket volumes are down, though ticket prices are up on Broadway for the summer just ended as compared to last summer.  The net result is a sales decrease of 9.3%.

Now, that’s nothing to throw a party about, but is it a “flop”?

Consider what’s happened since last summer:

-Catastrophic economic meltdown, leading to a rapid reduction in the size of the U.S. economy.

-Ditto in all the countries of Western Europe (and worse in many), where most of the former swarms of tourists were coming from.

-Significant strenghtening of the dollar versus Euro currencies, making it more expensive for European tourists to visit NYC.

-Famine, pestilence, and that plague of millipedes last February.

Well, fortunately, that last part hasn’t happened yet, but it sometimes feels like it.

And so, as always, I suggest that when you read something like this, you ask one simple question.  When the New York Post tells you that ‘B’way Summer a Flop,’ you simply ask:

Compared to what?

Certainly not compared to the economy overall.  A 9.3% decline is probably a little healthier than the economy overall.

Certainly not compared to the financial service industry, which is the lifeblood of Manhattan. (You know, where Broadway is.)

And sure as heck not compared to the New York Post, whose circulation is down 20% year on year as of April.  As far as that goes, Broadway is off record highs by 9.3%, whereas the newspaper business is setting new lows on the heels of new lows.

There’s no question that Broadway could be healthier, and if Ken Davenport and Jordan Roth are right, that should show up this fall.  In my view, the key to this is to cultivate a local audience more aggressively and to start creating compelling original intellectual property again.  For the last several years, during the low-dollar fueld Euro tourism boom, much of Broadway’s programming was based on producing shows that a Spanish plumber on vacation with only a passing knowledge of English would recognize from a billboard in Times Square.  And so you get Shrek.  (Not to knock Shrek.  It has its place, but a world of Shrek is a path to long-term decline for the Broadway genre.)

So there you have it: a good old fashioned lesson in not believing everything you read.

I’m sure you’re relieved that you don’t have to go looking for Star $alvation.