Home Page

Will Congestion Pricing Further Depress Broadway Attendance From NYC Suburbs?

January 29, 2024

by:

Joe Patti

Just before Christmas Broadway producer Ken Davenport called attention to an issue which may or may not impact Broadway attendance starting later this year. Starting this Spring, congestion pricing will be implemented for Lower Manhattan before 9 pm. The cost will be $15, more if heavier traffic is expected and even more if you don’t have EZ Pass electronic toll payment set up. (Though most people who regularly drive within a 50 mile radius of NYC already have EZ Pass since there are so many other toll roads that use it.)

Davenport had noted in a separate post that Broadway attendance by people living in the suburbs across the bridges and tunnels from NYC has been down significantly since the return from COVID so there is a concern that these fees may reduce attendance even more.

Davenport suggests that while $15 more factored into all the other costs associated with attending a Broadway show may not provide a significant disincentive, nobody should be operating on that assumption. Instead there should be an effort to increase the perceived value of the experience:

But congestion pricing is here. And it’s not going anywhere. Bloomberg wanted it years ago and people thought it was a ridiculous idea. (I wonder what he’s saying now?)

So we can’t just sit around and talk about how terrible it might be.

What we need to do is figure out how to increase the experience and value of seeing a Broadway show that an extra $15 feels like a bargain for what they are getting.

It occurs to me though that London implemented congestion pricing in 2003 and the West End theaters appear to be right in the center of the zone. I wonder if anyone did any research into the impact on attendance to those shows. They may not have been as worried given differences in time (not after a pandemic dip), production funding models, and other factors.

Audience Relations, State of the Arts

No Comments

Artists, They Aren’t Making The Community Any Worse

January 24, 2024

by:

Joe Patti

Title of the post today is intentionally leveraging a statement in a study conducted by Jennifer Novak-Leonard and Rachel Skaggs for the National Endowment for the Arts of public perception of the arts during Covid. It was the topic of an interview/post with Sunil Iyengar who heads up research and analysis at the NEA.

The full quote is:

Nearly two out of three respondents shared the opinion that, quote, “Artists who work or live in their area make it better to live,” and roughly one third affirmed that it doesn’t necessarily make communities better, but artists certainly don’t make them worse.

The encouraging takeaway is that people have a positive view of the artists across all demographics:

In 2022, however, over half of adults expressed the perception that artists uniquely contribute to U.S. communities healing and recovery from the pandemic. Fifty three percent in open-ended responses offered specific ways that artists promote that healing and recovery. I will say, Jo, that one of the surprises of the study to me is that it found virtually zero differences in social or demographic characteristics as playing a factor in the likelihood of respondents to identify positively with artists.

As the authors say, quote, “Most adults in the United States across its many socio demographic groups and perceptions of artists, roles, and communities view artists as being able to contribute to the healing and recovery of communities directly and positively from the pandemic.”

Another interesting takeaway from the research is that people are equally likely to view artists as hobbyists (30%) as they are to perceive them as wage earners (27%). I may have to seek the report out to discover what the perceptions of the other 43% are. Perhaps a combination of some hybrid perception and/or not having any opinion on the matter.

Advocacy, Art(ist) Education, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, creativity, Working In The Arts

No Comments

Hiring A Fun Coach Like A Physical Trainer

January 23, 2024

by:

Joe Patti

Last week, NPR Reporter Andrew Limbong interviewed Catherine Price, author of The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again. Limbong observed that while he has the impulse to roll his eyes at the news people are hiring party coaches and fun coaches, he can see that these roles maybe akin to people hiring physical trainers. Basically, people find they need to carve out time to focus on fun and need external assistance in accomplishing that goal.

Price says there are three conditions required to have true fun- playfulness, connection and flow. You will notice her definition of connection especially aligns with the conditions people seek from arts and cultural experiences:

A lot of adults get very nervous when you use the word “playfulness,” so I like to say you don’t have to necessarily be silly or childish. It’s really just more about having a lighthearted attitude towards life and towards yourself.

Connection refers to this feeling of having a special shared experience with other people. And then flow is active and engaged. And really importantly, flow requires you to be present. So if you’re distracted at all, you can’t be in flow and you can’t have fun.

She observes in all the stories about fun she has collected from different countries and cultures around the world, very few involve spending money or traveling anywhere. This reminded me of Jaime Bennett’s TED Talk from ten years ago where he observed that people think that art is something someone else does rather than something they have the capacity to do. In this case, it is the idea that you can only have fun in a time or space dedicated to that purpose rather than to make it part and parcel of your daily activity.

Limbong picks up on Price’s mention of being present and asks if social media may have an impact on people having fun. He observed that the fun he is having with nieces and nephews can often be interrupted by someone wanting them to stop and memorialize the instant with a posed picture. Price expounds upon the idea that fun has to have an authentic flow because it spoils so easily.

I think it’s really messed us up because one of the requirements for fun is that you be completely present and that your inner critic is silent. And if you’re performing, then you’re not fully present and you probably have your inner critic on in some capacity. That kills fun. Fun is very fragile. It’s like a sensitive flower.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, State of the Arts

No Comments

Supermarket Self-Checkout And Loyalty

January 22, 2024

by:

Joe Patti

I came across a study conducted by researchers at Drexel University , (well one is an alum that teaches at University of San Diego), on whether using the self-checkout lane at a supermarket results in less loyalty than using the lane where the employee processes purchases.

I was curious to see if there are any lessons to be learned for arts ticketing in terms of online purchasing vs. in person purchasing. Even though a large portion of tickets are sold online, something I have noticed over the last five years or so is that greatest concentration of ticket sales in a period of time tends to generally be during the hours the ticket office is open. I was hoping to get some insight into whether there might be a trend toward people wanting more personal contact during the purchase experience. In the context of increasing conversations about loneliness, it isn’t too far-fetched to imagine a shift away from interacting only with machines.

The researchers conducted studies with five slightly different designs to try to control for things like what people were accustomed to doing at the supermarket, whether people felt rewarded for the choice of check out, number of items being purchased, and intentionally priming participants mindset by reading different texts before going shopping.

Basically, while people who felt they were being rewarded for using self-check out, whether it was due to some benefit or being primed by a reading passage, tended to feel more loyalty and satisfaction as a result, the biggest factor was actually number of items being purchased. The more people exceeded approximately 15 items, the less satisfied and supported they felt by the supermarket while using the self-check lane.

That seems pretty logical given the small amount of space you are provided to bag and stage groceries in a self-check out lane. The more items one purchases, the greater opportunity to encounter errors. I imagine this is even more likely when trying to ring up produce which may not have been effectively labeled or indexed for look up. Often there is only one person monitoring 10-15 checkout stations and you have to wait while the staff member assists others.

The researchers note there is a lot more research about self-check out that needs to be done since there are many factors in play. Some researchers have looked into issues like perception that you are contributing to the loss of jobs by doing self-checkout. Then there is the related question about why you aren’t getting any incentive to do an employee’s job. I have seen some great videos for clothing self checkouts where people experienced a great deal of frustration removing the anti-theft tags on top of having to remove hangers, fold and bag.

Probably the clearest lesson here for arts organizations is that people need assistance the more complicated their transactions become so you always need to provide an opportunity for purchasers to speak to a live person. Certainly it is frequently impractical to provide live assistance 24 hours a day, but having the availability of live help posted clearly and repeatedly can help people feel supported.

This may sound blatantly obvious, but in the last few months I was in a conversation in which someone commented that venues in some countries have completely ended staffed box office hours outside of performances. I may be misremembering slightly and the phones were staffed and there are no walk up interactions. Certainly, other countries have different cultural expectations about customer service.

Audience Relations, Pricing

No Comments