dbc03
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Posts posted by dbc03
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18 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:
or cut spring training in half. that will save 6 figures across the board
This would need to be regulated by DCI across all corps to be worthwhile, otherwise the competitive disadvantage ends up losing too much, winning brings financial support.
Then the audience has to be ok with lower quality performances across the season. Will people be willing to pay Allentown prices for the equivalent of early July performances? A lot probably will, but some won't and you shrink the audience and the money that bigger audiences bring.
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5 minutes ago, HockeyDad said:
When somebody does the case study on why drum corps fell apart they can use this thread as input. Tons of handwringing. All ideas to cut costs dismissed out of hand. They just won’t work. Or - that’s not the cause. Nothing is the cause of excessive expense. Not the tour, not the staff size, not new uniforms every year (they actually make money!), not the gigantic pit, not amps, not props, nothing!! Nope you can’t take away ANYTHING they must continue to EVOLVE. Evolve right into insolvency. Apparently that’s the end state of drum corps evolution. Yup, we’ll always have our downloads and CDs.
The issues are complex and a bunch of armchair drum corps directors that are convinced everything will be fine if we just do what worked 40 years when they marched aren't going to solve the problem. The "solutions" being offered have glaring problems that are obvious after a few minutes of critical thinking. I don't know what the solution is, if I did I'd be making a lot of money as a nonprofit consultant, but I can easily recognize problems with the solutions being offered
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15 hours ago, TenHut said:
I was promoting a very similar model 10 years ago which would eliminate corps membership from outside of the region they line in. The current model of mostly out of state membership isn't sustainable. Corps need to recruit members and staff close to home. Make it a community activity again.
I started in my "local" corps (still 3 hours away, but the closest to me) and honestly had a pretty miserable summer. Then I went to a corps 9 hours away and had a great time.
If you told me at the time that my options were pay thousands of dollars to be in a corps I didn't want to be in or stay home I'd stay home.
Even if I was willing to do it, 3 hours is too far to commute during the season, so I would still need exactly the same housing and food.
Unless you are hyper local, restricting who can be a member of which corps is completely pointless, and if you do restrict it to hyper local members you'll have corps with 20 members if you're extremely lucky and in a high population area.
There is no demand for community based drum corps, kids have other options and even high school bands (which have largely replaced local drum corps) are having trouble recruiting.
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1 hour ago, cfirwin3 said:
That's part of the cutting loss. They will have membership, but they will absolutely lose some top talent.
But, they will "be". They might even make a point in doing so. I suspect that a number of folks that may be shut out elsewhere would love a chance to be in 'Vanguard' or to be a 'Cadet' regardless of the circumstance.
What good is a fear of status that ultimately causes one's total demise?
I suspect that the hope will be to survive to recruit top talent another day... but I also suspect that day will be hard to attain once everyone is comfortably placed elsewhere. Who will want to take the risk?
Outside of Cadets and SCV how many strongly competitive corps have folded in the past 30 years vs corps that haven't been competitive?
It's a competitive activity. Competitive success helps pay the bills
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11 minutes ago, cixelsyd said:
As I said on the DCI CEO thread, and will repeat here... you could cut travel expense by touring less, and you could cut housing expense by recruiting locally. These ideas have already been dismissed. Less people will march under those circumstances, and then we WILL have a revenue problem.
We need food.
So what is left?
Touring less also means less income from shows, there's probably still a net benefit to touring less, but there are tradeoffs. Fewer shows means fewer fans coming in to an activity already struggling to keep up with other activities that are more broadly accessible.
I'm not convinced that you could fill that many corps with locals to the point of reducing housing costs (I'm assuming you're implying that the kids will stay at home and travel to rehearsals daily themselves). High school marching band has filled the niche that local drum corps once filled and I don't think there is enough desire for a summer version in a small enough geographic footprint to maintain corps that don't provide housing.
While careful budgeting is certainly needed to try to reduce costs increasing revenue is equally if not more important. There is a limit on how much budget you can cut and still support a modern drum corps and prices for food, housing, and travel aren't likely to go down, so corps would have to continue cutting and cutting until there's nothing left. Corps will have to get creative and create new revenue streams if they are going to survive. If they don't then the activity will die.
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4 minutes ago, JimF-LowBari said:
So that would be a budget of one million….
Yes, approximately $1 million in expenses and $1.3 in revenue in 2021
https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/850545477_202110_990_2022052420131358.pdf
Note that the "previous year" numbers are wonky because it ran from April to November due to the split from YEA (and also, it was 2020), so not a great comparison
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1 hour ago, drumcorpsfever said:
I’m not sure there’s enough scale remaining for a regional model. Perhaps it’s time to scrap the whole DCI model altogether.
I wonder if there’s a way to tap into local school districts by creating DCI district bands - district drum corps. These corps would compete during the summer, march in parades, appear in community events and festivals. If successful, the activity may be able to grow and prosper.
Local school districts already have bands and the desire for local summer marching bands is nonexistent, it's hard enough to fill out music programs as it is and school districts aren't particularly known for spending more money on music programs
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Focusing on props is like the inverse of the dril candles tweet
Housing: $300k
Travel: $400k
Food: $300k
Props: $20k
Someone who is good at the economy help, my drum corps is dying
"Buy less props"
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3 minutes ago, JimF-LowBari said:
What would that be in dollar amounts?
And the old saying of: couple drops here, couple drops there.. and eventually the bucket overflows.Based on the most recent 990 2% of expenses is about $20k
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Both of you are being ridiculous
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1 hour ago, Barneveld said:
If there's an asterisk, does that mean it's really not a legit 3-peat?
There has never been a legit 3-peat because Star wasn't competing during them (the most legit is the Cadets 3-peat since Star was there for '85)
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1 hour ago, Tim K said:
Dan Potter asked an ill advised question in 2019. He was pilloried for it, apologized to the corps. He got the wrath of DCP and I may have even commented. I spoke with people with the corps after it happened, some whom I have known for over 30 years, who shrugged it off. If the corps can forgive, we can too.
I can certainly forgive but it is still really funny
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BD's win will have an asterisk because Star isn't here this year
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Edit: Wrong thread
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It wasn't super clear to me either, but I believe that a "ticket package" is just a single ticket for all 3 nights, so to get 2 tickets for all 3 nights you need 2 ticket packages (so bronze level as keystone said)
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bump, still available, I can do $45 a ticket
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Row 11, seat 16 for Friday
Row 11, seats 26 & 27 for Saturday
Asking face value ($55)
Will sell them all together or individually, send me a message
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On 7/6/2023 at 12:36 PM, dbc03 said:
Section Q/R/S or high (row 25+) G/H/I/J.
Message me on here
Bump, can do two tickets now
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Tickets have been acquired, thanks!
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8 hours ago, scheherazadesghost said:
Nobody is saying this...
It's literally the topic
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3 hours ago, craiga said:
Jeff, do you suppose half of the alumni who were talking about lack of diversity even know that the Cadets' corps director is African American?
Oh, well, then diversity is solved once and for all!
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I'm glad that the high cam for finals actually adjusted to the parts of the field actually in use. That was my biggest complaint with the Allentown broadcast, corps would be between the 30s and the high cam was still endzone to endzone so it made it harder to see everything
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2 minutes ago, On the 50 said:
The replay of Finals just started a few minutes ago (over 90 minutes late).
I really wish the replays gave some indication of the current time. Since they aren't even starting replays on time it would be nice to know the schedule for today rather than what the schedule was yesterday
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10 minutes ago, bluesman said:
I'm going to get a lot of flack for this, but we have a Judicial system in this country that exist to prosecute people who violate our laws as he clearly did. His actions have caused lasting harm to his victims and to this activity. Many, including myself would have liked to have seen him do some serious jail time, but his punishment was set by the courts. If the idea is to ban this person from ever attending another show, are we also going to ignore his contributions to the evolution of the drum corps?
Yes, absolutely ignore his contributions and never bring him up in relation to this activity again. His evils vastly outweigh anything positive he did for drum corps. Blot his name from everything drum corps related. He should be known as a rapist, not as a drum corps director.
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A follow up message from CA&E's Board Chairperson
in DCI World Class Corps Discussions
Posted
I don't think the desire for summer marching band is strong enough that something else will necessarily fill the niche if DCI dies. We're talking about an activity with what, 5000 kids currently? A good portion of those are college students making tremendous sacrifices to do this particular version of competitive summer marching band. If the experience is lessened there will be even less demand.
It's not like sports where you have the chance of going pro or getting a scholarship.