A question for the purists: was there more that could have been done?

[Fred Windish]

Attendance is a crazy thing to discuss. Not that those who do discuss attendance are crazy, but the underlying factors affecting attendance are many. Too many. But, paid versus unpaid attendees can be very surprising. No matter what amount of people show-up in -person, any total number of paid viewers beyond the front sideline is difficult to maintain. In fact, sitting low outside the 20s isn't so hot.

I think the revenue coming from broadcast customers is where the growth is. That's why getting the current broadcast product higher is so important.  Several of the disconcerting recent changes to the on-field product we discuss here actually do work better through broadcast.

Broadcast, itself, could work better with some additional changes, too! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[StunnedMonkey]

28 minutes ago, jwillis35 said:

I get what your saying, and we can argue numbers of fans at shows until we are all blue in the face. In the end, we are talking about different times, places, different models for running a corps in the 21st Century, and the cultural climate today is vastly different.  As Jeff mentioned in one of his posts, part of the reason the attendance was great during the Montreal years was the number of Canadian groups that took part for those 2 years only. But there were other reasons too.

I was there in 1982 and also feel part of the big attendance numbers were due to having Finals in another country, and Montreal is a wonderful city with great history, food, things to do, and that stadium had just been used for the Olympics and I think people thought it would be cool to see a DCI show there. 

Even today, with numbers going up and all -- and I am pleased for DCI that this is the case -- I still clamor for an occasional Finals somewhere else. And I think numbers would continue to be good. However, I feel nothing is proven when people argue over attendance figures. In the 50s and 60s drum corps had a more local flavor.  There were lots of rivalries that may have driven attendance (among other things). 

I always go back to the following questions when arguments like this break out:

1) If everything was so good back in the day, then why did all those corps disappear?

2) Regardless of what your reasoning for question #1 might be, we are where we are. What did you expect to happen? No Change at all? 

3) Did we all expect DCI to not mirror present-day culture and to stay firmly implanted in the 60s or 70s?

I was there in 81 and 82 also. Perhaps our paths crossed.

with regards to why there aren't nearly the number of corps today, that's easy. Who can afford it? With what DCI is today (for better or worse) it's simply no longer possible to participate in a shoestring. You need big money.

[Bobby L. Collins]

Yeah it's really hard to claim the activity is growing when the number of active corps has shrunk from over 200 to less than 4 dozen.  And why did all those corps disappear?  It certainly wasn't because every single corps director in the US and Canada couldn't manage money.  No, it was because DCI abandoned its mission to provide a platform for all those corps to thrive, and instead focused upon cutthroat competition.  That's all anyone here really cares about anymore.....who wins finals.  Well as far as I'm concerned, NO ONE won Saturday night.  Culturally, ideologically, and ethically, we have all lost.  Today, the battle for decimal points on a sheet of paper sells tickets, rather than any sort of pretense of a wide variety in musical and visual styles between all the different corps.  And I think that's a real shame.

Corps could operate on a FRACTION of their budgets today if they would stop spending all their money on such needless equipment and gimmicks to score G.E.  Ticket sales and attendance may be up at shows, but the bottom line is that DCI is now performing to a fraction of the audience they once bolstered.  Because you know whose watching all those clips on YouTube?  Band kids and vets.  The same people who are still going to shows.  The activity is simply no longer relevant outside the insular bubble maintained by those who grew up participating in it or who are currently participating.  And that trend is unsustainable in the long term.

Edited August 15, 2017 by Bobby L. Collins

[BRASSO]

16 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:

here's some facts:

 

.

Everyone likes to crow about 81 in Montreal. Here's some fact....30-40 of the corps that attended were school groups from Quebec and Ontario that only did those two years. So while Montreal in 81 had 98 groups, the average before that was 60-70 a year. hence the boost up to 36k. And many of those groups only performed the two years in Montreal. 

.

 Wrong. I was there in '81 for that entire week in Montreal. There was no " 30-40  Corps from Quebec/ Ontario Provinces ". There were approx. 12-15, and  most of them competed earlier in the week, ( All Girls, and Class A ( Open Class ), and their buses left with them before Finals Night. There is no value in creating revisionist history of an untruth in order to bolster a point to be made about today's DCI's Finals Nights attendance. What we CAN say with some degree of certainty is that DCI has shown the ability to increase its attendance for Finals Night the last few seasons. That is commendable, as it appears to be valid and verifiable. But it is NOT true that recent years DCI's Finals Night attendance exceeds earlier decades years Finals Night attendance when there is no evidence whatsoever that DCI utilized a different formula in 1981 to flash across the screen on Finals Night in '1981  that the attendance that night was anything less than the  " 35,947 " attendance that DCI themselves had posted that nite.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 15, 2017 by BRASSO

[cixelsyd]

3 hours ago, jwillis35 said:

I get what your saying, and we can argue numbers of fans at shows until we are all blue in the face. In the end, we are talking about different times, places, different models for running a corps in the 21st Century, and the cultural climate today is vastly different.  As Jeff mentioned in one of his posts, part of the reason the attendance was great during the Montreal years was the number of Canadian groups that took part for those 2 years only.

We have already debunked that assertion, as there were nowhere near the number of Quebec/Ontario corps that Jeff claimed, and most of them did attend DCIs beyond just the Montreal years.  But if the Canadian draw really had such record-breaking gravity, maybe DCI should have kept staging events in Canada.

Quote

I always go back to the following questions when arguments like this break out:

1) If everything was so good back in the day, then why did all those corps disappear?

2) Regardless of what your reasoning for question #1 might be, we are where we are. What did you expect to happen? No Change at all? 

3) Did we all expect DCI to not mirror present-day culture and to stay firmly implanted in the 60s or 70s?

My question is the logical corollary to your #1.  If changes are so good, then why did attendance and participation decline all through the 70s and 80s despite the massive changes DCI made in those years?

Edited August 15, 2017 by cixelsyd

[GUARDLING]

1 hour ago, cixelsyd said:

We have already debunked that assertion, as there were nowhere near the number of Quebec/Ontario corps that Jeff claimed, and most of them did attend DCIs beyond just the Montreal years.  But if the Canadian draw really had such record-breaking gravity, maybe DCI should have kept staging events in Canada.

My question is the logical corollary to your #1.  If changes are so good, then why did attendance and participation decline all through the 70s and 80s despite the massive changes DCI made in those years?

One can also say with all that was changing in the world, smaller local corps and support organizations disappearing ,kids with much more at their fingertips than previous decades, bad management, etc etc. Maybe those very changes are what kept  the activity alive? Iknow for sure many of the founders thought so.

Is change always good? Of course not, Do we need to keep trying and move forward. IMO absolutely yes. Agree or disagree,Just a thought.

Edited August 15, 2017 by GUARDLING

[jwillis35]

1 hour ago, cixelsyd said:

My question is the logical corollary to your #1.  If changes are so good, then why did attendance and participation decline all through the 70s and 80s despite the massive changes DCI made in those years?

How do we know it was changes that DCI made in the 70s and 80s that caused the attendance to decline? Maybe that had more to do with societal changes, things that were beyond anyone's control. Maybe some people got old and moved on in their lives.  I think it's unfair to lay the blame at DCI's feet.  I know for a fact that society will always have an influence on the arts, the same way the stock market affects companies. Sometimes things are good, and other times the market will correct itself. Things were bound to change -- that is an absolute fact. 

[jwillis35]

9 hours ago, StunnedMonkey said:

 I certainly can't say either way if that's the case or not. But I'd contend that the Internet/Social Media/YouTube etc have had a lot to do with marketing the product so that it exposes far more people that it did 25 years ago. With the same marketing/communication today as was in place in 1990, what would the audience look like? 

Social media apps and the WWW have absolute helped drum corps. I see that as a great thing. Whether or not today's shows would have been successful in the 80s or 90 -- and vice versa -- is anyone's guess; but it doesn't matter. It's only the present time that matters, and it seems to be working today. Youth today seem to like the activity. Who are we to tell them what they should like?  The activity back in the day had plenty of faults and I, for one, have no interest in returning to those days. 

[c.l.]

11 minutes ago, jwillis35 said:

Social media apps and the WWW have absolute helped drum corps. I see that as a great thing. Whether or not today's shows would have been successful in the 80s or 90 -- and vice versa -- is anyone's guess; but it doesn't matter. It's only the present time that matters, and it seems to be working today. Youth today seem to like the activity. Who are we to tell them what they should like?  The activity back in the day had plenty of faults and I, for one, have no interest in returning to those days. 

It's also harder to convince a younger person (younger than myself even, mid 30's) that 70's and 80's corps shows were so great b/c the video and audio quality is terrible.

[Bobby L. Collins]

5 minutes ago, jwillis35 said:

 Youth today seem to like the activity. Who are we to tell them what they should like?  

Who are we to pigeonhole them into embracing all the sweeping changes they may or may not have asked for any more than we did?  They don't have a choice.  They either put on a spandex leotard and dance while playing into microphones, or they don't participate in the activity.

There ARE young people out there who would rather spin rifles and sabres and twirl flags instead of sashaying around the field waving jazz hands.  There ARE young people out there who would rather march intricate and well-polished drill instead of rolling around on the ground and dancing from one scatter drill to the next.  And there ARE young people out there who would rather just throw down with some banging tunes instead of constantly exploring the transcendental boundaries of electronic sound like a bunch of avant-garde musicologists from the 1960s.  Those young people are for all purposes bared from the activity, unless they agree to abandon their convictions and personal integrity in order to fit in with the "cool kids".  Not every single high school marching band out there has adapted BOA's "Flash-Over-Substance" philosophy......not yet.  THOSE kids no longer have an activity like DCI, because what goes on in DCI isn't cool, or relevant, or even respectable to them.  Not only is DCI limiting accessibility to its audience of fans and vets, but it is also limiting accessibility to the very individuals it claims to represent and work for; Youth.