MentalPolyphonics

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.