Alex Freeman - Page 12

Launched in mid-November last year, in the last 4 months we have already seen over 800 Stage Mags created. Not sure what Stage Mag is? It is a new, fully-customizable digital show program available from BroadwayWorld. Not only does this offer your audiences the comfort of a digital program built to be viewed on their phones, this offers you the opportunity to collect additional data points on your audience as a whole, not just on the primary ticket buyers.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen announcements that indicate much of the same, and plans are being made, tickets are being sold, and soon artists will be getting hired to get much of the creative economy back to work. While this is not a happy anniversary, it is a hopeful one.

As we approach the one year anniversary of Broadway shutting down due to the pandemic, the questions of reopening are finally moving from the theoretical to the real. What are the procedures going to look like? In places where venues are allowed to operate at some (or full) capacity, how to do it safely, and will audiences actually return?

A hopeful tone is starting to settle into the industry, even as some of the news and reports about the impact of the past year on local economies - and the creative economy as a whole - are bringing statistical information to what many of us have been feeling and experiencing the whole time.

This week, we have a lot of stories about the path to reopening from the around the globe - from Australia where reopening has already occurred and they’ve got Broadway productions playing to big houses to a story from The New York Times about what it took to get a new musical up and running in Tokyo with a global creative team.

Social media is an important part of cultivating your current audience, but when it comes to building new audience members, the tools provided by the social platforms aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

Now more than ever, the students might be the future. The education department of a theatre company has long been an important piece of the business model - but that might be more true now than it has ever been before. While audiences still can’t come into most of our performance spaces, students are still able to be reached in digital ways. These digital programs not only increase access, they are increasing the number of students (of all ages) who are able to engage with theatre in an all new way. In a time of continued social distancing, what we are learning about bridging that distance will be important for us to remember when we no longer have to stay apart out of necessity for public health. This week, we’ve got stories about connecting with audiences, with students, and continually questioning what our performance spaces should look like, along with stories about the ongoing economic impact of the shutdowns.

Over the last year, we’ve experienced a powerful evolution in how theatre companies interact with their audiences - and that evolution will only continue as we welcome audiences back into our venues after a long period of separation. For a lot of theatres, that has meant taking a look at their ticketing systems, and how they can continue to gain new data about their audience for all sorts of uses - grant applications, marketing, and even programming choices. For others, that has meant a strong push into social media as a touchpoint between producer and audience.

We’re now one month into 2021, and while many plans are still being held pretty loosely, more and more companies are developing their plans to return to live in-person performances. In those conversations, they couch those plans in all sorts of disclaimers, but there is a developing sense that by the end of this year things will be starting to feel more ‘normal’ - and in some places that sense could return even sooner.

The BroadwayWorld Streaming Calendar is the most comprehensive streaming calendar on the web - and if you're streaming a theatre production, concert, reading, or more - than you want to make sure it is included on the streaming events calendar.

You’ve got your marketing budget set, but how do you make sure that you get the maximum value out of those precious dollars? If you’re a non-profit, you want to make sure that you are being a good steward of resources on behalf of your donors. If you’re a for-profit, then you want to make sure that you’re protecting your bottom line.

Building - and justifying - a marketing budget that is the correct size for what you're trying to achieve is always a difficult task. But if most business professionals were to look at your marketing budget, they'd come to one conclusion: it is way too small.

It's been a week of ups and downs across the global theatre industry, but regional theatres are confident, the West End is reeling, and Australian festivals are starting to open.

Deep budget cuts, a return to the stage in Q3 of 2021, and a surprising amount of confidence are the three biggest highlights from our recent survey of Industry Insiders across the United States.

As we turn the calendar to 2021, we can't leave the lessons learned in 2020 behind us.

Looking back on 2020 illuminates the many paths that are opening for the industry in 2021.

As we find ourselves in the midst of the holiday calendar, a normally busy time for producing organizations across the world feels very different this year.

The vaccine news continues to be promising, and every day a new understanding of the timeline to a return to “normal” comes out - as you’ll see below, Dr. Anthony Fauci thinks that normal could be as early as Late Summer/Early Fall, and that would be a situation where audiences aren’t required to be masked or socially distanced.

Happy Thanksgiving week to our readers in the United States! With continued news about the development of an effective vaccine and the conversation turning to how the vaccine will be deployed globally, the light continues to grow brighter at the end of the tunnel for this intermission. This week, however, we have some stories that demonstrate the extensive amount of damage that has occurred to companies across the globe, and how even if the industry is starting to see a path forward in the future, for some individual companies there are dark days ahead. There are also stories of bright spots: summer arts festivals in Australia have been planning (and re-planning, and planning again) for how to get themselves up and running in a safe fashion, Las Vegas continues to bet big on live entertainment, and AEA and SAG-AFTRA have finally reached an agreement on streaming theatre. All this, plus a new digital service from BroadwayWorld, below!

Encouraging news out last Monday about a potentially effective COVID-19 vaccine that could be widely available by April of next year. For many organizations, that is bittersweet news - it might guarantee over a year of closure, but there is at least starting to be an end in sight to the uncertainty, if nothing else. Outside of the United States, we also saw plenty of encouraging news out of Australia that is seeing more and more of its stages re-open at 50% capacity. As they push to return to 100%, they may be able to provide a roadmap for the rest of us as to how we ramp back to normal as quickly, and safely, as possible.