Jump to content

So what are we going to do about it?


Recommended Posts

44 minutes ago, CCond said:

I believe that is a misguided view. The shows these corps are producing are far beyond what any marching band could achieve, amped or not. 

 

But more to the point of my first post at all; your petition won't do anything. DCI is a money making machine and they don't care what any of us think. If you don't consume it, somebody will. Since the finals attendance numbers are record shattering every year, I would guess that the activity isn't devolving in the eyes of the 30 or so thousand people that came to watch us all perform last year at Lucas oil. There will be more there this year, and my guess is they'll love it all too. 

Read my post again.  It was responding only to your sentence, "This activity is designed to evolve".  But since you conflated it with everything else in this thread that irks you:

- It is not "my" petition.

- I understand DCI is a business, and likely could not even figure out what we think of it, much less care.

- Not sure about the accuracy of your attendance data.  If you think there were 30,000 fans at finals last year, you should check again.

- Yes, I understand that it might take a fatal loss of fan support before DCI would have any chance of recognizing at what point correlation really is indicative of causation.  The world of hurt DCI was in for years after the fan discontent of 1993 has been blamed entirely on the choice of venue for championship week that year.  Any attendance drop in the electronic era can be blamed on the economy instead of the electronics.  Amping the whole corps may not even rise to become one of the top five moments of electronic discontent; too early to say.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, rpbobcat said:

I disagree.

DCI is just like any other business,non profit or not.

They exist to make money to perpetuate their organization.

No money,no DCI.

Non profit,does not mean a charity.Ask any non profit hospital.

In my opinion,until what's done on the field affects their bottom line, I don't think DCI really cares what a few (i don't know how many members DCP has) die hard fans feel.

 

Read the mission statement of any drum and bugle corps. It will contain zero words concerning profit. Each corps is a separate 501(c)(3) organization, incorporated for the purpose of character and skill development among youth.

DCI is, in a legal sense, a membership organization. It exists to create life-sustaining system for these individual corps to live out their purpose, by providing them with the venues for live performances, and with ancillary products (eg video) that generate the visibility and revenue that the corps need.

Of course it is a reciprocal relationship, and of course the money is important. The primary purpose of each corps' individual board of directors is to make sure the organization has the resources it needs to fulfill its mission to the youth. In the realm of copyright, licensing, performance and merchandising, every corps director understands that DCI is in the music business. Everyone understands that nonprofits need to bring in more money than they spend, if only to build reserves. No one here is a fool.

But it remains true that the real customer is the marching member. The whole activity exists for them, first. They are the ones paying the bills. Look an any corps' income statement, and you'll see that tuition is the single largest revenue stream (outside of SCV and BD, and increasingly, BAC, which have developed significant revenue lines beyond the membership). When the day comes that members don't need to pay thousands of dollars to participate, we can say DCI is in the entertainment business. DCI doesn't exist to sell live music and dance to an audience. It doesn't exist to sell CDs and livestreams. If it sells anything, it sells world-class instruction to young people seeking world-class excellence, a byproduct of which is an intense, life-altering experience that happens to be the most fun you'll have in your lifetime. That's what a drum corp produces. A corps produces stellar young people.

The real bottom line is the marching member. You can say "no money, no DCI," but that's empty. It's a line of logic that applies to just about anything. No money, no house. No money, no education. No money, no health. No money, no family. Unless you're a monk, money is a constant and assumed necessity in any area of life. So that's a facile argument.

The real argument is this: No kids, no activity. If young people don't show up to audition in November, DCI dies a sudden death. Of course the tickets and livestreams and the T-shirts and all the rest are part of a necessary and virtuous circle, but every successful enterprise has a clear idea of why, and for whose benefit, it exists. The circle starts with the kids.

Edited by 2muchcoffeeman
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, 2muchcoffeeman said:

Read the mission statement of any drum and bugle corps. It will contain zero words concerning profit. Each corps is a separate 501(c)(3) organization, incorporated for the purpose of character and skill development among youth.

DCI is, in a legal sense, a membership organization. It exists to create life-sustaining system for these individual corps to live out their purpose, by providing them with the venues for live performances, and with ancillary products (eg video) that generate the visibility and revenue that the corps need.

Of course it is a reciprocal relationship, and of course the money is important. The primary purpose of each corps' individual board of directors is to make sure the organization has the resources it needs to fulfill its mission to the youth. In the realm of copyright, licensing, performance and merchandising, every corps director understands that DCI is in the music business. Everyone understands that nonprofits need to bring in more money than they spend, if only to build reserves. No one here is a fool.

But it remains true that the real customer is the marching member. The whole activity exists for them, first. They are the ones paying the bills. Look an any corps' income statement, and you'll see that tuition is the single largest revenue stream (outside of SCV and BD, and increasingly, BAC, which have developed significant revenue lines beyond the membership). When the day comes that members don't need to pay thousands of dollars to participate, we can say DCI is just like any other business. But the "product" is an intense learning experience that provides benefits for life. It's not a CD, or a show on the field. That's not what a drum corp produces. A corps produces stellar young people.

The real bottom line is the marching member. You can say "no money, no DCI," but that's empty. It's a line of logic that applies to just about anything. No money, no house. No money, no education. No money, no health. No money, no family. So that's a facile argument.

The real argument is this: No kids, no activity. If young people don't show up to audition in November, DCI dies a sudden death. Of course the tickets and livestreams and the T-shirts and all the rest is part of a necessary and virtuous circle, but every successful enterprise has a clear idea of why, and for whose benefit, it exists. The circle starts with the kids.

A) The term non-profit is a misnomer. All it means is that profits from revenue have to be returned to the organization instead of going into the pockets of an owner or stock holders. No profit, no organization will exist. And by the way, corps which try to exist on their main profit being garnered from youth members are the corps which either fold quickly or stay well below the competitive level to be contenders in both WC and OC.

B) While still existing in the realm of 501c3, the moment top corps pushed the activity into a situation where it takes the amount if revenue now produced by BD, SCV, and the rest of the G7 in order to stay solvent and competitive, combined with the moniker Major League where the top corps only accept the best youth instead of showing altruism to non-trained youth, it changed from being an activity of altruism and education for the kids into becoming a real and legitimate sports/competitive big-business. And revenue stream concerns for just the top corps, not altrusict and educational concerns for the collective, are what actully drive the top voting members in DCI today.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Stu said:

And revenue stream concerns for just the top corps, not altrusict and educational concerns for the collective, are what actully drive the top voting members in DCI today.

To reiterate: Money of course is necessary, and indeed making sure there is enough of it is Job One of every corps' own board of directors.

But if what you say is true, drum corps no longer have a legitimate claim to be 501(c)(3) organizations. If what you say is true, the stated purpose of junior drum and bugle corps is a sham. If what you say is true, we are perpetuating a fraud upon several thousand young people. Worse, we are exploiting them. That's not an activity I want to be involved with.

Edited by 2muchcoffeeman
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, luv4corps said:

I would say that if one corps does it, then they all need to to do it, or it isn't a fair contest.  

 

 

All corps are permitted to do it, if they so choose. It is a completely fair contest, as each corps creates the show and sound they desire. How well it works is up to the eyes and ears of those watching/listening, and in some cases, evaluating/scoring.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, xandandl said:

Are you saying that corps are becoming lemmings?

 

I pretty much agree that they are.

 

Personally, I find modern corps very unique in how each approaches costuming and show design, as compared to my era. Those that dared to be different back then got all sorts of flack, though with no internet it was limited to DCN editorials (the themed shows of Garfield, Madison, St Rita's and the Cavies), and comments by old-timers at shows (Garfield;s 1971 libretto or Bayonnes banana unis in 1976 to name a couple), or a t-shirt proclaiming 1971 to be The Year Drum Corps Died (due to a few corps creating those themed shows)..

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, 2muchcoffeeman said:

The fanbase is not the reason DCI exists. It exists to serve youth.

 

 . . . well, allow me to modify: DCI exists to help the individual corps serve youth.

Well in that case, instead of surveying DCP, which is largely made up of people old enough to have kids in the activity (or older), shouldn't we be surveying the youth that DCI exists to serve? Everything I've seen shows that the vast majority of members, and audience members of the member age, approve. When members stop joining or spectators stop buying tickets because of it, then it's too big of a problem.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, 2muchcoffeeman said:

To reiterate: Money of course is necessary, and indeed making sure there is enough of it is Job One of every corps' own board of directors.

But if what you say is true, drum corps no longer have a legitimate claim to be 501(c)(3) organizations. If what you say is true, the stated purpose of junior drum and bugle corps is a sham. If what you say is true, we are perpetuating a fraud upon several thousand young people. Worse, we are exploiting them. That's not an activity I want to be involved with.

This is not a slam. Nor am I trying to be condscending. This is an honest response. Non profit organizations like Little League Baseball World Series, the Olympics, National Cheerleading Association, DCI, etc... all of which support highly competitive arenas for the best of the best youth from around the world, construct altruistic sounding mission statements because those mission statements are in accordance to the 501c3 application requirements. So you bet your bottom dollar that ultra competitive organizations like DCI have never really lived by those 'charitable' mission statements. And if you are just now waking up to this, where have you been all these years?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...