I'm only posting this because it's relevant to my job. Down with Live Nation! (Just kidding)
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By Timothy McNultyPittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Broadway touring business is an old-fashioned one, often based more on old friendships and personal ties than corporate synergy and stock prices. So when last season's Tony Award-winning musical "Jersey Boys" announced it was hitting the road, Cleveland Playhouse Square's Gina Vernaci reached out to the producers in New York.
Soon enough the show was booked in San Francisco, Los Angeles and eight other cities -- including Cleveland. In the 1980s the "Jersey Boys" production team, Dodger Theatricals, had road-tested its first show outside New York in Cleveland and stayed in touch with people there. Those ties helped Playhouse Square get the Tony winner next year, while it is not yet scheduled in Pittsburgh's recently announced 2007-08 Broadway season.
"People know you, they know what you do, they know how you do it," said Vernaci, the group's vice president of theatricals. "You'll never have a better representative for yourself than you."
In Pittsburgh things work differently. The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust does not book its Broadway series at the Benedum, Byham and Heinz Hall on its own, but rather through Live Nation, an offshoot of Clear Channel that books Broadway in about 40 cities nationwide.
The business has not gone well for the corporate giant, and it announced in February that it is selling off its theatrical assets. That may lead to changes in Broadway road tours, but not in Pittsburgh -- the Trust plans to keep working with whatever booking company takes over Live Nation's business.
That is consistent with the Trust's history. Its relationship with the company goes back to the start of the Trust's oversight of the Cultural District in the 1980s, when Pace Management also began booking national Broadway tours. Pace became SFX Entertainment, which was bought by Clear Channel, before it spun off Live Nation in 2005.
Some of the same people who worked for Pace a generation ago are still with Live Nation, Cultural Trust president Kevin McMahon said, and he expects the same people to be there when Live Nation is sold, no matter who takes over the nation's biggest Broadway subscription series.
"It isn't like we have a Plan B, like we're 'Oh my gosh, what's going to happen?' It will be interesting to see who answers the phone and who doesn't answer the phone. For the most part we're not anticipating much change, if any," he said.
That's because no matter who books the shows, McMahon said, Pittsburgh should continue to get top-flight Broadway tours. Last year it had all four 2005 Tony-nominated musicals, including the winner, "Spamalot." It hosted the national tour kickoff for "The Producers" in 2002.
It has "Avenue Q," which won the 2004 Tony but delayed its national tour while trying a Las Vegas run, and "The Drowsy Chaperone," a 2006 nominee, in the upcoming 2007-08 season. Other musicals on the schedule are "Sweeney Todd," an '06 nominee for Best Revival, a return engagement for "Lion King" and "My Fair Lady," based on the recent 50th anniversary London production.
McMahon said Pittsburgh should also get "Jersey Boys" late next year, just a few weeks after it plays Cleveland.
The Trust also contracts with Live Nation to avoid headaches on long-term scheduling, marketing and promotion of the shows, McMahon said.
"The proof is always in the pudding -- are we getting the big first-run shows -- and that to me is what I'm most concerned about. I want to make sure the PNC Broadway Series is one of the finest Broadway series in America. That's our principal goal. We're living up to that," McMahon said.
Others say the sale of Live Nation's theatrical business is just what the Broadway road -- where sales have been struggling nationally -- needs to regroup. With less corporate pressure for profits, producers could support riskier shows. Local programmers would be freer to tailor their Broadway slate to regional tastes, rather than taking shows under pressure from Live Nation.
"With the kind of pressure the Wall Street mentality was putting on the business, [Live Nation] had to find ways to bring in more income. That either meant less expensive shows, kind of squeezing the producing side of things, or forcing up ticket prices on the road," said Steven Chaikelson, chair of the theatre arts division at Columbia University in New York and director of its masters program in theatre management and producing.
"Ultimately, this could be a very good thing for everyone, depending on how the sale goes."
Pat Halloran, president of the Orpheum Theatre in Memphis, broke with Pace (Live Nation's great-grandfather) in 1986 after the Houston-based company had troubles learning the Memphis market. His theater became "instantly profitable," he said, a lesson being learned by other cities breaking with Live Nation and booking shows themselves.
Cities such as Tampa, Fla., Nashville and Birmingham, Ala., have lately broken with Live Nation and joined the Independent Producers Network, an association of nonprofit programmers and theaters nationwide. Halloran is the group's president.
"For the last couple years people have become disenchanted" with Live Nation, Halloran said. "It wasn't that they didn't like them -- they didn't need them anymore. Instead of sharing profits for what they were doing, they realized they could do it themselves.
"It didn't take a nuclear scientist to know you should get 'Wicked,' " Halloran said of the top-grossing Broadway tour last year and a big seller in Pittsburgh.
Cleveland started doing its own booking about 17 years ago, Playhouse Square's Vernaci said, partially due to concerns about Broadway tours getting too corporate and cookie-cutter.
"We wanted the ability to chart our own course and to select shows reflective of this community and not those possibly reflective of other interests," she said. "If you are buying for yourself, as opposed to buying from somebody else, it's always better for the community."
Pittsburgh would have no problem attracting shows as a free agent.
"When you have a market like Pittsburgh, which is the same as Cleveland, they want to play these cities. These are important, northern industrial towns, with deep roots and deep values in the arts, and really good, smart audiences. The shows want to come here," Vernaci said.
McMahon, who has helmed the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust since 2001, has heard all these arguments before. He previously worked for Playhouse Square and Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center, which also programmed independently.
As long as Pittsburgh is getting the best Broadway shows, as soon as possible after they go on tour, he said there is no reason to change the way it does business, even when Live Nation sells its theatrical assets.
"If something unusual were to happen with the sale, we will look at it," McMahon said of going independent. "One way or another we're going to continue to have a great Broadway series, and that's why in general this sale is not keeping us up at night."
Copyright ©1997-2007 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.pittsburghpostgazette.com/pg/07127/783975-325.stm
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