MentalPolyphonics
Smash monogamy.
On the theory that long responses should be new posts, here we go:
Alright, a couple of developments:
First, I underestimated the budget. MPF scooped the Times Colonist (again) in reporting the funding cut but the TC got the inside story: Fringe’s budget this year is $700,000. The funding cut is $35,000, or 5%, plus 5% for the HST for a total hit of 10%. I don’t like including the HST though because it’s value-added and effects the whole province. It’s more an adjustment in the value of the currency than a pricing change.
Second, Fringe is 10 days long. That’s $70,000 per day for a community theatre event staffed by volunteers. I talked to a friend who used to organize Fringe in Minneapolis and, to quote him directly, “that’s an absurd amount of money to spend on Fringe. Absurd.”
I’m interested in knowing where it all goes. Perhaps I’ll Google around for some kind of statement of expenditures. I bet it’s available as a FOIPA request for the grant application. The TC says something about it being for “technical and administrative expenses” which doesn’t bode well — those seems like the kind of things volunteers would do for free, or that could be expensed, donated, and deducted twice by corporate affiliates like Intrepid.
Third, I was doing the math in the shower this morning and estimated thus:
Imagine you have 20 shows at 50 seats each, which all sell out, and you increase ticket prices from $9 to $20. That’s only an extra $11,000 so insufficient to cover the shortfall. Perhaps someone in the know could critique my figures though? I just made them up — how many shows sell how many seats on a total basis? What’s the take on those passport-buttons?
For economics geeks like me out there: What’s the elasticity of a Fringe ticket? It’s going to have a sloping coefficient, sure, but it seems reasonable that people are almost indifferent between, say, $9 and $10. There’s clearly some room for a price hike.
Talking to someone else who was at the show last night, “they should charge more” is not a unique opinion. Okay, part of the audience is the elderly and the poor — but really? I seem to remember the shows being stuffed with hipsters.
Victoria is getting richer and younger, not poorer and older. I think there’s a case there for better advertising — hit more offices than outreach shelters. Get in touch with a team building leadership consultant and have offices full of programmers, lawyers, accountants, doctors, and government workers in to network with each other.
And students, while feigning poverty, are well known to be price-indifferent to pretty much everything, despite what they think and say. “I’ll just use debt, or skip the alcohol” is their eternal last minute justification.
In any case, I no longer think price hikes are the whole solution.
If this was a business case I’d dig into the expenses and look for efficiencies, raise prices very slightly (enough to keep them locally-inelastic), and turn the public funding cut into a rallying cry for private funding. Give a bank some cheapgood public relations:
Fringe Fest, brought to you by RBC Dominion Securities. Invest in your community and in your future.
Targeting young professionals and hipsters is ridiculously difficult now that we’re all on to the suckage of television. This kind of situation is tailor-made for generating corporate goodwill and new RRSP signups.
To take it further, $700,000 per year is endowment-level cash. If you could run the show on the cheap for a few years and invest the remainder eventually you’d end up with a self-sustaining show instead of one beholden to the vicissitudes of public economic policy. That’s “only” an endowment of $14 million invested at 5% or 6%. A little more to inflation-protect it, call it $20 million. Has anyone rung up the Egoyans and asked if they’d like to give back? If you can’t find rich people looking for $20 million in tax deductions in Victoria I suspect you’re not actually trying.
I love The Fringe, I love the people, I love the shows. They need to lose the addiction to public funds and do some hard thinking about where that $70,000 per day is going. A 5% budget cut at the end of a terrifically deep recession isn’t the kind of event that should send a cultural institution spinning off into the artless void (I like that turn of phrase, Karen).
If Intrepid wants to talk to someone about business strategy and financial planning they have my contact info. I’m registered as a volunteer, perhaps my time would be better spent on the finance committee than distributing hand fans and collecting sports day hot dog vouchers. They could also use a better PR firm and probably better accountants, and I know people.
I thought this set a good overview. Also: there is very little...
Ryley
Here’s a wrench for your plan:
Button sales benefit Fringe, artists receive 100% of the door.
Jack
Yeah, I just heard this today. Good thing I hedged and my plan no longer solely revolves around ticket pricing. Besides, there’s nothing stopping them* from increasing the prices and changing the chop.
* Or maybe there is — Anyone else know of any other insane rules?
Karen
The artist are only allowed to charge a max of $9 a show. The fringe is a part of a bigger network of other fringes. They have rules. Edmonton is now cahrging $2 fee per ticket instead of buttons and making a shitload of money which considered unfringe like and against the policies.
The 35,000 is cut from intrepid’s budget for rest of the year. 40% more cuts in 2010.
The fringe helps support intrepid for the rest of the year. 7 venues have paid techs and front of house managers. You could never get a volunteer to do a tech job. It has ridiculous hours and doesn’t pay well anyways. They could get rid of the front of house and make board members do it again, but they mess everything up. Volunteers run the box office and do other smaller jobs around the festival. 10% of each house is reserved for comps so that the volunteers are able to see shows for free. Fringe is one of the better things to volunteer for because of that. Each venue needs stages, lighting, sound, risers, chairs which is all very expensive. They used to not have risers and smaller venues and people complained and complained. They must be doing something right that they should hit over 25,000 people attending this year. I know there is a bunch of city permit things they have to get and other things i can’t think of right now.
I know it is cheaper for fringes to use already built theatre spaces like they do in edmonton and vancouver but victoria does not have enough spaces. Intrepid only just opened metro space 5 years ago and just 2 years for their theatre club.
Also a lack of cheap venues and rehersal space in town. Maybe you should get into that business?
oh and the 9$ shows with no student and senior price do not do as well as the student/senior shows, unless is it someone really good that has sold out shows everyone wants to see. Remember most of these people like to go to at least 5 shows or more and that adds up.
Jack
I was going to give this the full business case treatment — It’s interestingly complicated — but then I realized it’s 4am and the answer is simple if you just assume it’s not disallowed:
Edmonton has solved the funding problem. It might be “unFringe” but alas our economy runs on dollars, not Fringe Authenticity Points. Victoria should do that, but better: Convert the dollars to FAPs by bonusing whatever excess Intrepid can’t use* out to the artists, or the audience in the form of ticket discounts.
Look, artists hate money — that’s a law of power: despise what you can’t have — but there comes a point where, when you can make money and save the festival, but turn it down anyway because making money isn’t cool, you drift into the realm of dangerous insanity.
Like, if the government just taxed all Fringe tickets $2 and then gave Intrepid a grant each year in that amount, less administrative expenses, I now suspect this problem would be permanently solved. Why does the festival need the government to take a fee and bless the money? Why don’t they just collect it themselves?
I know a senior tax policy analyst, I might run that idea by him — they’ve recently freed up a bunch of PST-related staff and are looking for things to transition them into. 25,000 attendees times, say, 3 shows each times $2 is $150,000. They could give Intrepid its $35,000 grant and have enough left over for two full-timers. That’s job creation!
Oh wait, what I meant to say is: I have a money blessing service Intrepid might be interested in. What I do is charge $2 to all Fringe customers and then give that money to Intrepid, less a nominal blessing fee (nondenominational).
Who do I talk to about this Karen? I’ll make you a bishop*.
* LOL — gravy train.
Karen
Ian Case.
I don’t know if the fringe has a funding problem. I think it is fine. Intrepid itself has a funding problem. They do things all year around that are more traditional art stuff. Have you read about the history of the Fringe. It started in Edinbourgh as a repsonse to certain content not being allowed in the huge theatre festival they city had.
Fred
Ignoring the problems for next year, at $70,000 a day and a $35,000 short fall. Drop half the events from one day and the problem is fixed. What try and complicate it. Some of the shows always suck and The Fringe need to learn to clean them out. It is only students and the elderly anyway.
Karen
“Some of the shows always suck and The Fringe need to learn to clean them out.” The fringe whole brand is that is unjuried. Not an option. Making the festival shorter is though.
Jared
Could they raise the fee the artists pay? Right now it’s $500, which obviously isn’t enough to keep sucky shows out. If performers had to get hotel rooms instead of having Fringe staff organize billets for them that would also raise the barrier to entry.
(Again, all this decreases Fringe Authenticity Points, but a rational economic agent would only get the minimum number of points to secure the “Fringe” brand.)
Government Hatchets to the Ready! | MentalPolyphonics
on September 9, 2009 at 2:56 am
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