After a lively debate on the blogotubes over the last few weeks, hopping around multiple blogs, lots of individual posts, and even more comments, we offered Combined Artform's Matthew Quinn some space to give his unvarnished thoughts on Theatre Bay Area's "Free Night," in order to condense a thread from four different sites and sum up the numbers - he graciously accepted. Below is a quick summary of the conversation to date followed by Quinn's post.
SUMMARY:
May 17:
Radiostar interviews PianoFight on current state of theater, discuss Theatre Bay Area's "Free Night of Theater" program
June 9: Theatre Bay Area (TBA) releases a study titled
"Assessing the Intrinsic Impact of the Bay Area Free Night of Theater Program"June 16:
Arts Journal posts results from an NEA funded survey which cites double digit declines in theatrical audiences since 1982
June 18: Head theater critic for SF Weekly Chloe Veltman invites TBA's marketing director Clay Lord to post his thoughts on the study in a post titled
"Great Study. But What's It For?" - Dan Wilson (of Radiostar), Sam Shaw (of Crisis Hopkins), Matthew Quinn (of Combined Artform) and Carl Benson (of PianoFight) respond with questions about specific numbers
June 23: TBA posts
second study of "Free Night" with hard data on ticket requests, actual attendees, and follow up purchases prompting PF's Benson to make case against "Free Night" in post
"The Real Problem with TBA's 'Free Night of Theater'"June 26: TBA's Clay Lord responds on TBA blog Chatterbox in post titled
"Theatre, Relevance and Hush Puppies" and Matthew Quinn presses for more numbers
July 2: Matthew Quinn breaks down cost of "Free Night" versus return in sum-up of conversation on the PianoFight blog (below)
COMBINED ARTFORM'S MATTHEW QUINN BREAKS DOWN NUMBERS ON "FREE NIGHT"
Clay,
Thank you so much for this information it helps to give me a better picture of the value of "Free Night of Theatre." And thanks to PianoFight for letting this go up as a post and not just a comment, and outlining the thread of conversation.
So summing up the numbers, the actual value of this project is much higher.
$182,000 - Printed value of tickets
$200,000 - Original PR Services
$50,000 - Additional PR services
$20,000 - TBA Services
$40,000 -Survey
$492,000 - Total Resources used for FNOT-So almost a half a million dollars worth of resources are used for FNOT and for that you get 3,581 people to attend a show, at a resource cost of $137 per person.
-Of those people, 74% were first timers seeing the company putting on a show or 2,650 people, to get this market it cost $186 per person of the resources.
-And for the ever so hard to get, new people to the theater, 18% or 645 people for $765 per person.
So looking at this I think one needs to ask, is FNOT really working?
Is this an appropriate use of these resources?
Could something more effective be done instead?
I'm sure there are many positive elements of this project, but is it providing you with the right type of awareness, people, and information at a cost that makes sense?
Are theaters in the community (large, small, members of TSC) fully aware of the cost and reward of this project? Half a million seems like a lot for a one day event.
And to the second point, of course it would be great to have a survey to confirm those hunches we have on audience decisions, to get more insight into an audiences actions and how to get new people to our shows.
My question: "Are these even the right people to be surveyed?"
And are the above questions even the ones we should be asking? It's a bit disconcerting that money is being spent for data that isn't considered useful, yet, just wait and see.
And while I understand grant money takes a while to come down the pipe, and you're reacting to plans from years ago, is it prudent to go ahead with a 4-5 city expansion using additional resources for a program that isn't utilizing those resources and providing information that is not yet useful?
I'm sure some people are happy with the results of the program. Any new people are great people to have, especially if, as you point out, there are not many (if any) out of pocket expenses. My concern is that no one appears to be questioning if there is a better use of these amazing resources, on a model that can bring in more people without saying theater has to be free in order for them to see it.
Does the community really see this as a benefit and effective use of resources?
Just because you can do this, should you?
We could still get 6 million marketing impressions with the same publicity, just a different program.
And what do companies feel about $40,000 being spent on a possibly useless survey when perhaps it could be used for other more relevant purposes?
I would really like to hear other companies' thoughts on this.
In closing, I did get a chance to read the posting on
the Mark-Up and perhaps I'll get some time read that book, it sounds very interesting. I also added a comment about some thoughts I had on Free and Theater and while it's not an answer, I do try to come up with some different uses of "Free." And I'm sure the community could come up with a better program then FNOT to get audiences to the theatre, your thoughts?
Thanks again for your time and commitment to this conversation, it is appreciated.
Matthew Quinn
Combined Artform
UPDATE - JULY 4 (by PianoFight): As the conversation in comments has veered slightly away from TBA's "Free Night" and into the realm of the art itself, we thought it prudent to post a few more links which deal with this specifically, and which helped spur a lot of this type of conversation.
October 7, 2008: Brendan Kiley of Seattle's The Stranger newspaper posts article titled
"Ten Things Theaters Need to Do Right Now to Save Themselves" April 13, 2009: Kiley posts on The Stranger's blog a lengthy email from PianoFight's Rob Ready, interspersed with Kiley's commentary, disccussing Kiley's ideas and how successful PianoFight's application of those ideas has been in a post titled
"Small, Successful Theater Companies in Other Cities: PianoFight from San Francisco"
