NPR: Broadway is New York's biggest tourist attraction and brought in $1.3 billion in ticket sales last season. But it's also a high-stakes gamble for producers, since only 1 in 4 Broadway shows turns a profit. This month, two of the fall's most highly anticipated musicals, a revival of Side Show and The Last Ship, with songs by Sting, have thrown in the towel — closing, having lost almost their entire investments.
3 comments:
I think a lot of this is a sign that some of the business modeling that producers are using to support Broadway shows just isn't working. Things need to be approached differently if shows can’t just go for more than a few months. Everything is either a massive hit or a huge miss. If it hits, it runs for 5+ years. If it misses, it closes within two short months.
Producers are obviously not the only ones to blame, either. The way the city government interacts with Broadway productions may also need to adapt to these changing times as well. If Broadway really is the cities largest tourist attraction, why aren't bigger incentives for these productions beyond tiny tax exemptions being offered? Financial support incentives have worked incredible on the West End, why isn’t Broadway following suit? This is a multi-part issue, but from the looks of it, not much is being done to improve it at all.
This is very interesting. I didn't hear very much about "The Last Ship" but I have heard a lot about "Sideshow". When I was looking at shows to see in NYC over winter break, "Sideshow" was recommended to me many times by various different people saying it was amazing. But for some reason I had no desire to go see it. It could possibly be because I had really never seen any performances at the Tonys or on talk shows or maybe I had somehow missed all the advertising it had. But I think the biggest issue is it didn't really have anything that would bring an audience to it. Which is supported by the quote in the article that nobody will go to a show they don't want to see. The way the show is set up, there is very little that the average Broadway viewer would latch onto to drive them to go to the show. None of the characters appear to be relatable and we get very little information about it in ads. Comparing this to Wicked (which I am personally not a fan of) which somehow became amazingly successful, you can clearly see the difference. Wicked is taking a well known children's story and turning it on its end; the perfect fodder for Broadway goers. And even though the show was very weak, the audience was so ready to enjoy it that ended up enjoying it despite how mediocre it was. This sad truth should hopefully show advertisers and producers what audiences will latch onto and allow them to use it in their marketing of new musicals.
This article hits the nail right on the head; you fundamentally can’t sell people something they don’t want. You can hype it up all you want you can throw in gimmicks and tricks and famous performers, but none of that will fix a bad show, or one that doesn’t grab the audience’s attention. Broadway has had a lot of duds in the past few years and as someone who lives so close to Manhattan it often feels like shows are leaving Broadway almost just as fast as they are being produced. Dud after dud it almost feels relentless. Mostly only Tony award winning shows last more than a year or so and sometimes the rejects don’t even make it that long. If shows want to make it on Broadway they have to be geared towards what the audience wants, or what they will want or what will be so revolutionary and amazing that everyone will want to see it. For shows now it’s pretty much make it big or die, sink or swim so productions should really be more carefully thought out and considered before being put on the stage. I mean look at Spiderman as an example, the tech was unfinished the show was strange and undeveloped, and who said they wanted to see a singing Spiderman anyways? I think more consideration needs to be put into Broadway productions to break this break or bust trend and to improve theater overall.
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