cixelsyd

The alternative (that the G7 proposal had serious forethought and examination from leadership of all seven corps) is even more chilling. Therefore, I would like to believe that the G7 proposal was the work of just two of the directors, and was not seriously reviewed by the other five.

Okay, I will do exactly as you say. All business. But keep in mind that there are a number of businesses interacting here - DCI, the corps, external show sponsors, etc. Oh, I see where this is going. Let me see if I can put this in terms you understand. 1. Most of the "brand equity" in this activity is DCI. 2. A good portion of DCI revenue is the result of DCI work, selling and promoting their product - a competitive league. 3. The business model of a competitive league is not based on individual competitors bickering with each other over who thinks their "brand equity" contributes more to the bottom line of the league. In fact, it is based on the product being sold (competition). Therefore, the better the competition, the more it sells. As a result, business oriented leagues tend to impose competitive parity on their members by various means (losing teams pick first in the draft, salary caps and revenue sharing level the financial playing field, etc.). DCI should do the same, if you wish them to be more businesslike. No, this is business. If these fabulous corps with all that "brand equity" were truly high level performers in a business sense, they would be able to sustain operations. Why do you now contend otherwise? As for the other organizations, there are many others that can perform at the same level from a business standpoint. That sounds like "too big to fail". Should top corps get a bailout? That is not good business sense. These corps should develop sustainable business models, and if they do not, they should be allowed to drift aside while corps with better business models continue forward. Then the corps racking up those costs need to cut back, and live within their means. Higher performance level means little if the cost to achieve it is unsustainable. That is common business sense. And remember, you asked to look at this as business. But DCI has sustained itself for 40 years. Better yet, the individual corps from top to bottom reached the absolute pinnacle of sustainability for all of activity history under DCI guidance. Until the G7 began siphoning revenue and attention from the rest of DCI, corps at all levels were as stable as ever despite a horrendous economy.

Wonder if moving the Atlanta major event to Sunday and giving the Charlotte G7 show a Saturday night slot will help the G7 get out of the red (so to speak) in 2013.

Maybe now that they have eliminated those pesky Boston Crusaders, the 2013 "Music in Motion" series can turn the profit that eluded them in 2012. If not, I suggest cutting one additional corps each year until profitability is achieved.

Yes, 2013 might be a different story. For the 2012 TOC shows, though, people tell me that the corps appearance fee was high, approximately double that of a normal DCI show - and that on this basis, the 2012 TOC shows did not generate enough revenue to cover that cost, thus "losing money". I learned from you that what DCI charges the show sponsor for a corps is not necessarily the same amount as the appearance fee DCI pays that corps. So that raises the possibility that the TOC shows have been (or will be) set up to operate at a loss to the sanctioning circuit - in other words, paying the corps more than the show sponsor is charged for the lineup.

DCI voted to terminate the Troopers' membership status in DCI after the 2005 season. There is a provision in the bylaws for that action. However, it requires a unanimous vote from all the other corps, if memory serves.

You are correct - my eyes jumped a line earlier. Still surprised to see expenses increasing so much in 2010.

I am surprised by these numbers. I would like to know why the expenses for the Cadets are so high. I would also like to know why they increased so much from 2009 to 2010, but not nearly as much in 2011. Expenses for show hosting should have been lowest in 2010, the year their home show was in Clifton. In both 2009 and 2011, it was in the Meadowlands, where stadium rental should be much higher. Plus, 2011 is the year they toured to California. What happened in 2010 to make it an expensive year?

So true.

No, it is not reasonable. With only seven corps trying to cobble together a cross country tour? Plus, there are economies of scale involved with some of the other related tasks, such as assembling a judging pool, paying their travel costs, securing rights, and so on. The only way it becomes the least bit plausible is if, per the terms of the G7 proposal, the other corps all fell obediently in line and made the G7 circuit a 40 corps operation like DCI currently is. And that would only be a short term proposition, as the lower corps are bled dry that much quicker by the increased pay disparities of the G7 system, and we are left with seven corps trying to cobble together a cross country tour.

Hey, that sounds like a good business model. How about we double pay across the board, then?

And that might be a perfectly valid mindset in September - but not in July.

You forget that in the case of sync rights, a situation develops where the offending corps can still get their own income stream while DCI does not get theirs. If it is a most favored nation issue, the corps might be able to foot the bill for their own video licensing, but DCI cannot afford to pay the higher rate across all the other content on their product. Potentially, the fair use issue could be another way in which an individual corps can become the sole source for their unedited field show video. For a corps that is already invested in releasing their own tour DVD or similar product, there could be a significant boost to their own sales as a result. You are correct to point out that this is not full blown G7 conspiracy at work. We do not see all seven of those corps purposely selecting music that will cause sync licensing issues. But at the same time, I doubt any one of them would lose sleep over their video being edited on the DCI product, given all these circumstances.

1. I care. 2. How much time garfield has is not your concern. He is not on your payroll. 3. How does one make a name for themself on DCP by posting under a screen name? That makes no sense. 4. A self-evaluation may be in order regarding that last sentence. <slap!> DCP is here for people to discuss drum corps in detail. The whole reason the forum exists, and is organized in subforums and threads, is for the sake of people who wish to discuss those details. If that interests you, keep reading. If not, click on something else - the remainder of the Internet awaits your judgment with baited breath.

For one thing, there may be kids who cannot do a full summer schedule in 2013, or cannot afford the cost of it, but who would be interested in marching if there was an open class drum corps in their area. As for Cascades recruiting, maybe they are thinking long term. Some of the kids that enter the activity through an open class program may eventually move to the world class program of the Cascades.

Then we are only talking about someone of similar voice recording a few seconds of the same words. Problem solved.

Maybe not. But we have not established just how deeply dependent DCI is on the ability of each and every corps to fulfill each and every tour appearance. More on that below. Yes. Now, substitute "bingo" for "brothel", and the accuracy of your statement becomes even more clear. To that, I would suggest that the system might accomplish that even when a member corps folds, provided it does not happen in the middle of tour like the Teal Sound situation. And how much income does DCI lose? There are other corps wanting more shows that can fill in when someone drops out of the lineup. If the change takes place in the preseason, there may be no loss of income to DCI. Mid-season, maybe only a handful of show sponsors require a refund for getting one less corps, in the cases where no other corps can fill in at such short notice. Drum corps has always been like that, and still is today to some degree. It is a pre-existing condition as far as the DCI evaluation process is concerned. Maybe that is why the existing member corps do not want DCI evaluating their finances. We might be surprised which corps would not pass, even corps like - oh, someone is knocking at my door again.

And do not expect that funding to be turned back on. Just think, the same process that roots out the Teal Sounds might also root out the - oh, just a minute, someone is knocking at my door.

That is how you defend the use of clips from 1965? Tell you what - come 2052, when the law catches up with technology and clarifies that murky "fair use" issue, then let drum corps use the easy button as they wish. Meanwhile, you still have not given a solution to the 2012 reality. And like most things, what technology giveth, law taketh away. Anachronism sells.

So DCI should just let it go because maybe they will not get sued? I bet that suits the Cadets just fine. After all, the circuit they and the rest of the G7 will flee to is already incorporated. They have their plan B for when DCI gets sued out of existence.

So what? No drum corps arrangement is either. So if the Cadets could not get Dean Martin to sing (darned age rule), then why bother using the music in the first place? You are comparing apples to oranges. The original recorded audio of a vocal clip from a TV show is no more/less iconic than the original audio of a song from the album of a particular artist. Drum corps is about re-arranging iconic music so that their own members can perform it. We do not simply copy a Dean Martin album, play it over the speakers and send the horns and drums home. Why should copyrighted vocal clips be treated any differently? DCI is a youth educational activity. It should be educating participants in how to arrange, perform and respect copyright, not how to take the easy way out and copy the work of others. Only if they are fair use - and you have not shown how DCI and their corps can resolve that question.

Okay, but - Nearly as large? So even you admit that a corps of the stature of Glassmen cannot mimic the G7 on this tactic and expect similar success. I think we agree on this - it is still wise for corps at that level to pursue endorsements, but they will not amount to the same proportion of budget. I hope you prove correct in the future. For now, the numbers say otherwise. Absolutely. That may not be practical for corps with limited tours (open class), though. Now, to your confusion on what I said about summer clinics: Starting over, here is what I know. Back before the millenium, DCI began staging clinics in conjunction with major events and some ordinary sanctioned shows. Band directors were contacted directly with offers of group ticket sales and clinic access for their students. Some bought in to the extent that they required busses for the number of participating students. Once there, the kids (maybe 1,500 of them) were brought onto the field for the clinic during a long intermission. A clinician or corps staffer would run a corps through its paces, breaking down techniques so that the band kids could see up close, or participate themselves. These clinics were hugely successful, not just in filling seats at the shows, but also in getting kids hooked on drum corps, demonstrating how it is done, and convincing kids they could do it too. For many years, different clinicians and corps would take turns providing this service at different shows. It has been one of the greatest DCI cooperative efforts. But when the G7 came along, some of their corps have made it their business (pun intended) to pursue their own revenue streams in areas that were the domain of a DCI cooperative effort. System Blue set that precedent in the area of summer clinics, when BD stopped participating in the DCI event clinics, instead staging their own clinics at a housing site on tour and claiming revenue by charging admission. It is hard to see where to draw the line on this issue. Many corps run their own clinics in the off season. In fact, some bill their winter camps as educational/fundraising events. Until BD, though, no one was staging separate clinics-for-cash along the tour path, vying for the same audience as DCI. I see that as a conflict of interest. The G7 are not all on the same page with this yet (Carolina Crown has served as DCI clinic corps in Muncie the past two years), so we cannot say whether the DCI concept of cooperative clinics is past or present tense. However, the Fran Kick clinics this summer (clinics without a corps) may indicate that not enough corps are participating in the DCI clinic effort anymore. You hit the nail on the head there. Maybe more than you realize. A look at most of our lower placing WC corps will reveal many examples of exactly that. Or maybe a perfectly valid, up to date business model that is simply a couple 100K smaller than that of the Cadevaliers. They are not stagnant financially. They have grown a lot in that department over their six years of WC participation.

Maybe it was not sufficiently clear from the rest of my post (and my other posts). Yes, copyright is not a total ban from using anything - but it is a prohibition from using a substantial enough portion of it to rise to the level I would call "intellectual property". If my wording differs from the legal definitions, sorry for the confusion. Still think that DCI and their corps need to present a united front on these issues, and that in order to do so, allowing individual corps to make their own liberal calls on what fair use might permit simply is not practical or advisable.

If foreign outreach is going to be in this discussion, it is worth pointing out that Pioneer does have a connection to South Africa that has brought as many as a dozen marchers per season to their corps from the other side of the globe. But is overseas outreach really an essential part of the success blueprint? Do all, or even a majority, of successful corps have similar programs? Two issues there. First, as you admit, the world of sponsorships, endorsements and product sales is "scalable" (more accurately, "scaled") based on where that corps currently resides in the competitive standings. A System Teal product simply will not sell like a System Blue product until those two corps cross paths competitively. Maybe corps should still implement these ideas, but generally speaking, they will not yield G7-level success for non-G7 corps. Second, part of System Blue is the monetization of summer clinic programs. Up until very recently, the whole summer clinic concept was a collective effort coordinated by DCI, where different corps would take turns staging clinics at DCI major events with the help of clinicians provided by either the corps or DCI. Then one day, Blue Devils decided that they would rather run clinics for their own exclusive benefit, not the collective benefit of the DCI movement. Is this sort of idea part of the G7 business model for success? If so, then other corps need to become similarly selfish and seize every opportunity to generate revenue streams, even with efforts that are in conflict of interest with DCI. My guess is that the reason we do not see all world class corps running their own clinics-for-cash is because some corps still support the collective DCI clinic concept. Matters not what I believe. Placements hardly move at all. Regardless of the reason, if the prescription for success is to achieve dramatic placement advances, how much success do you think we will see? Not sure what you are referring to. At this point, it seems like everyone is perennially placing in nearly their same spot. As an example, Academy is getting a lot of positive feedback in these topics. But what does their world class competitive history of 13-18-14-14-15-15 say about them? Well, if 17th is not a successful place to linger in, then we cannot ever have 17 successful corps. That is my point - if the business model for success is defined by a competitive ranking, it cannot work for all corps.

We know how this works already - we have seen it play out in DCI. They will be an option - the only option.