Sunday, July 08, 2012
Net: Tony Award Does Not Lengthen a Show's Run by 50%
StageMoney.: You may have seen the headline on a press release from NYU Stern School of Business, "New Study Shows that a Major Tony Award Lengthens a Show's Run by Almost 50%." The problem is the research conducted by a Stern professor and others says no such thing.
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4 comments:
"Being nominated for a Tony and winning a Tony is correlated with a longer run, 30% to 60%, depending on what time in the season a production opened." Yes, correlation is not a synonym for cause however, correlation does mean interrelation. Predicated on NYU Stern School of Business's findings you can see a relationship of the length of a shows run and whether or not they were nominated or won a Tony. It is right for the researchers to think "that the more likely mechanism is that both length of run and Tony awards generally measure the same thing, a production's quality defined as success with audiences" because thats what their correlations show.
Many people think that when a show wins a significant Tony Award that the show willrun longer on Broadway. However, “The researchers specifically deny that their findings support the notion that the Tony award boosts runs. A correlation is not a cause. They believe that the more likely mechanism is that both length of run and Tony awards generally measure the same thing, a production's quality defined as success with audiences.” I will agree with this statement because a tony only helps convince an audiance member to sell a ticket. It is almost like a stamp of approval saying, “yes! This is a good show!” However many show that haven’t won significant Tony awards have earned many successful runs (example: Marry Poppins). I also agree with the article in the fact that a musical is more predictable to run longer than a play. This is simply because today Americans tend to like big over done musicals, instead of a nice straight play. Either way a Tony can only help a run by filling another seat.
Reading this, I'm not as surprised as I thought I would be. When the article mentioned that good reviews seem to end up with shorter runs, while bad reviews have longer ones, I can recall several times that this has been the case. The most prominent example I can think of is "Wicked." Reviewers felt the show was "preachy" and too whimsical, however many people have referred to the show as the new Phantom, and it's currently in it's eighth year running. Similarly, in regards to Tony Awards, Avenue Q, which was up for Best Musical with Wicked, won over the latter, and yet it closed before Wicked, which, as previously mentioned, is still running with no signs of closing in the near future. I think the article examines some very interesting ways of looking at a Broadway show and estimating its run.
Aside from the blatantly misleading title, the study reaffirms some solid beliefs about predicting the run of a Broadway show. While I doubt that a Times reviewer disliking a show will directly increase the run of a show, I do agree that a review from the NYT probably has no effect. If, as the study claims, that most audience members don't read reviews before going to a show, then I would think this is definitely the case.
Addressing the oh-so-controversial title, winning a Tony Award is definitely an indication of success, not a cause. Further, just like most predications or indicators, a lack thereof doesn't necessarily imply automatic failure.
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