#1
Posted: 6/15/08 at 8:55am
Many theatre fans have years of positive associations with the familiar yellow PLAYBILL logo, yet few understand how PLAYBILL works on Broadway.
The audience for Broadway shows is a self-selecting group. Ten years ago, the average actual price paid for a ticket to a Broadway show was around $50 (after discount programs are factored into the equation). That price is probably significantly higher now. If you consider ancillary costs (parking, dining, etc.), that means the average couple going to a Broadway show has enough disposable income to spend several hundred dollars on an evening out. To advertisers, that is a desirable demographic.
What’s more, the Broadway audience, which encompasses tourist families and suburbanites, is both older and better educated than the average American. They are heads of households, decision makes who buy cars, place investments, and spend substantial amounts on luxury goods.
When they are in the theatre, waiting for the lights to go down and looking for information about the show, or waiting again at intermission, that is a captive audience. Its attention is a valuable commodity, an opportunity to establish a brand or develop positive associations for a corporation (just ask the corporate sponsors of Lincoln Center Theater or MTC, or the marketing people at the Hilton, né American Airlines Theatre).
Much ink has been spilled over the dearth of quality shows on Broadway. In the past sixty years, the sheer number of commercially produced shows has precipitously dropped. Both development and experimentation have become the domain of non-profits. Talented people seek more lucrative employment in the electronic media. Production costs and ticket prices have skyrocketed. Obviously, there is no one explanation for the state of American theatre, and there is still much to celebrate in this prolonged twilight of the fabulous invalid.
However, when one considers the commercial value of the Broadway demographic, one has to ask why the revenue from this advertising is not being funneled back into the theatre where it is so desperately needed.
In 1967, PLAYBILL was losing money. It was owned by Metromedia and was, by corporate standards, inefficient. The magazine was bought by a man named Arthur Birsh, who re-negotiated PLAYBILL’s contracts with the Broadway theatre owners. While these contacts have been renewed and updated, they are the basis of the PLAYBILL’s current operation in Broadway theatres.
PLAYBILL pays the theatre owners for the right to be the exclusive program distributed by ushers to each audience member. Souvenir programs may be sold, but the essential cast information is contractually required to appear in PLAYBILL. When a producer signs a contract with a theatre owner, his or her hands are tied. It is PLAYBILL or nothing. No revenue from the advertising goes to the producers or members of the production team.
Arthur Birsh retired almost 10 years ago, but the company is still run by his scion Philip Birsh. Over the years, the Birsh family have turned PLAYBILL into a highly efficient organization. Freak errors appear because there is a minimum of copy editing and haphazard monitoring of production. The amount of information about the play itself is so sparse because the production is restricted to a set number of words and pages. Some productions pay for extra pages, or luxuries like a color cover or an insert printed on a better paper stock. However, these costs are incurred by the production, not PLAYBILL, Inc.
PLAYBILL is a privately held company, so its accounts are not available to the theatre community as a whole. Evidence of its profitability can been found in the Birsh family’s real estate holdings in New York and, perhaps most tellingly, in Phil Birsh’s avocation, breeding and racing horses. Is this really what the advertising revenue from Broadway should support?
For many of us, our first and best memories of the theatre are inextricably tied up with the PLAYBILL we took home as a souvenir. It is sad to see our illusions dispelled. The truth is that PLAYBILL takes from American theatre significantly more than it gives. If the advertising revenue from the Broadway theatre programs was channeled back into the theater, how many more actors would step before the footlights? How many more directors would get their shot at a commercial hit? How many more set, lighting and sound designers would see their work on the Great White Way? How many more productions would turn a profit? How many more risky plays and musicals would get their chance at the spotlight? How much healthier would American theatre be?
These questions will probably never be answered. However, I hope that, if you have read this, you will at least look a little differently at that bright yellow banner.
The audience for Broadway shows is a self-selecting group. Ten years ago, the average actual price paid for a ticket to a Broadway show was around $50 (after discount programs are factored into the equation). That price is probably significantly higher now. If you consider ancillary costs (parking, dining, etc.), that means the average couple going to a Broadway show has enough disposable income to spend several hundred dollars on an evening out. To advertisers, that is a desirable demographic.
What’s more, the Broadway audience, which encompasses tourist families and suburbanites, is both older and better educated than the average American. They are heads of households, decision makes who buy cars, place investments, and spend substantial amounts on luxury goods.
When they are in the theatre, waiting for the lights to go down and looking for information about the show, or waiting again at intermission, that is a captive audience. Its attention is a valuable commodity, an opportunity to establish a brand or develop positive associations for a corporation (just ask the corporate sponsors of Lincoln Center Theater or MTC, or the marketing people at the Hilton, né American Airlines Theatre).
Much ink has been spilled over the dearth of quality shows on Broadway. In the past sixty years, the sheer number of commercially produced shows has precipitously dropped. Both development and experimentation have become the domain of non-profits. Talented people seek more lucrative employment in the electronic media. Production costs and ticket prices have skyrocketed. Obviously, there is no one explanation for the state of American theatre, and there is still much to celebrate in this prolonged twilight of the fabulous invalid.
However, when one considers the commercial value of the Broadway demographic, one has to ask why the revenue from this advertising is not being funneled back into the theatre where it is so desperately needed.
In 1967, PLAYBILL was losing money. It was owned by Metromedia and was, by corporate standards, inefficient. The magazine was bought by a man named Arthur Birsh, who re-negotiated PLAYBILL’s contracts with the Broadway theatre owners. While these contacts have been renewed and updated, they are the basis of the PLAYBILL’s current operation in Broadway theatres.
PLAYBILL pays the theatre owners for the right to be the exclusive program distributed by ushers to each audience member. Souvenir programs may be sold, but the essential cast information is contractually required to appear in PLAYBILL. When a producer signs a contract with a theatre owner, his or her hands are tied. It is PLAYBILL or nothing. No revenue from the advertising goes to the producers or members of the production team.
Arthur Birsh retired almost 10 years ago, but the company is still run by his scion Philip Birsh. Over the years, the Birsh family have turned PLAYBILL into a highly efficient organization. Freak errors appear because there is a minimum of copy editing and haphazard monitoring of production. The amount of information about the play itself is so sparse because the production is restricted to a set number of words and pages. Some productions pay for extra pages, or luxuries like a color cover or an insert printed on a better paper stock. However, these costs are incurred by the production, not PLAYBILL, Inc.
PLAYBILL is a privately held company, so its accounts are not available to the theatre community as a whole. Evidence of its profitability can been found in the Birsh family’s real estate holdings in New York and, perhaps most tellingly, in Phil Birsh’s avocation, breeding and racing horses. Is this really what the advertising revenue from Broadway should support?
For many of us, our first and best memories of the theatre are inextricably tied up with the PLAYBILL we took home as a souvenir. It is sad to see our illusions dispelled. The truth is that PLAYBILL takes from American theatre significantly more than it gives. If the advertising revenue from the Broadway theatre programs was channeled back into the theater, how many more actors would step before the footlights? How many more directors would get their shot at a commercial hit? How many more set, lighting and sound designers would see their work on the Great White Way? How many more productions would turn a profit? How many more risky plays and musicals would get their chance at the spotlight? How much healthier would American theatre be?
These questions will probably never be answered. However, I hope that, if you have read this, you will at least look a little differently at that bright yellow banner.
Updated On: 6/15/08 at 08:55 AM
