Tenoris4Jazz
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Posts posted by Tenoris4Jazz
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6 hours ago, ContraFart said:
I don't think its an arms race as the bulk of the costs have to do with the touring model, and not so much the production costs. Yes the greatest variance in production costs have to do with top named staff, but I am not sure that is at the top of the cost issues.
You are correct that the monetization opportunities are nowhere near where they are in professional sports, but DCI is not a professional sport, its a high end summer arts activity. (Or at least has evolved to be that)
What can DCI do? I am not sure. If DCI corps had listened to Bill Cook 30 years ago. we might be having a different conversation today. But I think SCV has made other corps directors think of how to get their financial house in order.
DCI's response to Bill Cook and Star was to turn up their noses and get all pissy about starting a corps from scratch with a lot of "scratch." There was a lot of envy and jealousy and Cook just shrugged and went about his business. If they had pulled up a chair and asked "How do we find more people like you???" instead of turning their backs and walking the other way, DCI would have financially solvent organizations all over the place. It's no one's fault but their own that they are in this mess. You had your financial "angel" and you ran him out of the activity (so to speak.)
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23 hours ago, C.Holland said:
It’s cheaper for housing a corps in a hotel than a school. This was confirmed to me by more than one OC Director.
I don't doubt you, but how in the hell does the math work on that? Are schools charging more than $1800/night now?
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22 hours ago, greg_orangecounty said:
I'll belabor it for you. It's not that they didn't know, it's that after making the monumental and painful decision to not tour updating a website within 24 hours might have slipped through the cracks. I don't believe one of the most historic corps in the activity was out trying to scam kids for $50.
Please.
Considering the skeletons they have in their closet... I wouldn't put it past them.
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2 minutes ago, phd-student-TTU said:
This would all depend on what you could find during discovery
I've been dealing with auditors for 25 years and I can say this without any reservation... if SCV were caught hiding pertinent information during an audit, the auditors would recommend they lose their non-profit status immediately. That would result in the very quick/painful/visible death of SCV.
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2 hours ago, jjeffeory said:
Is it both? I don't know, and many of us are confused.
DCI, as originally designed, is meant to organize the tour schedule and administer the contests and media... period. Running the non-profit that each drum corps is now is up to the organizations themselves. This is not the NBA/NFL/MLB/NHL where the admin structure is the individual owners running the league and making sure the health of the overall league is up to their standards. DCI's board are simply corps admin that get together to make an hour's worth of decisions and then go back to running their corps. That's always been my understanding of the power structure.
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29 minutes ago, jjeffeory said:
I have to believe that one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing.
That camp time is disconcerting, but calling something fraud is very pointed and borderline slanderous.
You do you, buddy, but it came across as over the top. I guess I appreciate your frustration, so I'm sorry if I came across strongly, but when I read that comment, I was just like "what? That's pretty out there". Maybe I'm watching too much "Better Call Saul" these past few days.
IF... and that's a big IF... SCV admin knowingly charged people $50 to audition for a corps when they knew they would not be participating in DCI at all in 2023, that is fraud. Petty larceny even. Charging people to try out for a unit that won't exist in less than 24 hours? That's the kind of stuff that gets you blackballed in lots of non-profit circles.
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On 12/22/2022 at 10:40 AM, keystone3ply said:
Wow! Must have been a slow day at work. Great spreadsheet!
I've been trying to do this for 5 years!!! Kudos to whomever found the time to put this together. It really reinforces the fact that most of drum corps is not being run in a fiscally responsible way. Even BD was getting close to zero net assets. Big hand to Bluecoats and Blue Stars for such great management.
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Many years ago, the University of Georgia hired a new Athletic Director. His idea for forming the budget for each sport was to quit taking the previous year's amount and adding a percentage. Instead, he sat down with each coach and asked them to create a budget, from scratch, for just that year. It took some adjusting by the coaches, but they loved it. In years where teams didn't travel as much, they cut back and the money went to other sports. In the end, no team ever went without, but they only spent what was necessary for that season. Since then, UGA's athletics has been the 2nd most profitable in the country, behind Texas.
DCI corps need to start focusing on this type of budgeting and spending. Drum corps operates on a "governmental" type budget. They set their budget for 2023 based on tax revenues for 2022. If taxes fall short... they just borrow more. If taxes increase, they just spend more. That's why our government is trillions and trillions of dollars in debt and why SCV will be sitting at home next season.
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3 hours ago, MikeRapp said:
I am not in a position to understand details of SCV’s situation, most notably their financial situation. Why has BD seemed to be fine with world class staff and programming, while SCV—right down the road—has been on the veritable edge of insolvency? Does anyone know?
The last time I did a deep dive into corps' finances, I was surprised by 1) how many were deep in debt, 2) how many did not conduct regular audits, and 3) how bad the balance sheet was. Cavies liability coverage was the worst I've ever seen in an organization that was not imminently about to file bankruptcy. The Bluecoats balance sheet was exceptional. Blue Devils finances are incredibly good. Vanguard's 990 looked good, but without being audited, you don't know what really lies beneath there, and now we found out... disaster.
The Glassmen folded because a BoD took over and wanted to be top 5 and contend. They borrowed as much money as they could and found success... and had no way to pay the loans back. In a few years after placing 5th, they were gone. If you keep chasing titles by spending wildly and not living within your means... well, see the Mets before Cohen.
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13 hours ago, Orwellian Wiress said:
I know this is probably referring to an older show but My Body Is A Cage instantly popped into my head when I read this one
Ugh... I can't even...
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11 hours ago, GUARDLING said:
Well I can only tell you my experience, When teaching If I had an issue with a judge it was always addressed, not to overturn anything but to make know my issue with the way they thought, ALSO a person has to know to put their own ego aside and listen to whats being said and adjust if necessary. This today is way better than the early days of DCI and other systems.
Does everyone have the same say? well there will always be the louder voices than others, thats life BUT I will say that even the smaller corps signed off in agreement on many issues over the years with the louder voices.
Twice in my HS band career we got dinged by a judge (hard) because of a personal disagreement in style, which should never happen. Our OTL was Spirit of the Bull, so the first two notes are supposed to be loud as hell. The judge/band director believed in slipping slowly into a show, so he dinged us a point or more after only 15 seconds of our show. We listened to the tape and we're all like "Have you HEARD the song before you idiot?!?!?!"
The second time was in concert at spring competition. We closed with Chorale and Shaker Dance and it brought down the house. The first two judges gave us 99/98. The third guy gave us an 86. He liked playing the piece very legato and our director had made us put breath marks in our music so we would have obvious pauses/breaks in the performance. (If you listen to recordings of this piece by college and all-star bands, that's the way it's supposed to be played) The judge came by after the sheets had been turned in and apologized. He said he screwed up, but the scores were what they were.
Bottom line is, if you're a judge, you should be evaluating the performance of the product that night/day. You may not like the music selection, the uniforms, or the drill, but that should not be a part of your evaluation.
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9 minutes ago, scheherazadesghost said:
This isn't transparent enough to garner the trust of families and MMs who pour money and their lives into this industry. While a crucial part of the equation, this just isn't good enough.
There's more than a few and they're leaders in the industry. Anyway, I'm pretty sure a balance can be struck somewhere in the vast area between "a few pests" and arson.
I think this brings things to one inevitable conclusion: DCI's leadership stays and participation drops by 50% or more... DCI folds. Or, parents' demand changes in leadership before sending their kids to march. So the overall performance level declines, but the activity goes on. Unfortunately, the parents are far from knowing enough or having enough influence to do this, so I just don't see there being drum corps much longer, sad as that would be.
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Just now, rpbobcat said:
My wife and I were in Allentown last weekend.
We were surprised how many people were upset that DCI didn't put out
some type of Anniversary Program for the 50th season.
People were saying that the programs are their only way to
know what the majority of the corps shows were about and the music they
were playing.
Seemed like tremendous missed opportunity.
Just a guess, but publishing something on the dci website costs a fraction of what it would take to physically print 100,000 programs. DCI just doesn't have the money to do something like that in a digital age.
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3 hours ago, Ediker said:
I’d be interested to see a math whiz break down DCI’s scoring system, and point out all of the limitations. One big limitation is when a corps maxes out a caption/subcaption, the scores reflect ranking, but not necessarily the extent one corps was better than the next placement. At best, it’s a fraction of a point, and often much less. Other scored competitions have ditched fixed score ceilings so that judges can better reward achievement.
This gets a little long and technical, so bear with me or just skip to the next post.
I've been a cost accountant for 20+ years and I minored in statistics... I can number crunch with anybody on the planet. I gave this a go over a decade ago and ran out of free time and got an inconclusive result. What I can tell you is the subcaption scoring limits seriously affect placement and overall scoring. I only got to look at brass scores before I had kids and lost all my free time, so looking at M&M/Visual/GE never happened.
Back in '73, Argonne should have gotten a 10%-15% margin for music analysis. Their book was the hardest thing anyone had ever seen by a mile. But due to there being a 10 point ceiling and a lack of rules governing difficulty, the difference between them and Vanguard was 1/10th of a point instead of a full point... which absolutely did not represent the difference in complexity and difficulty of those two programs. The most obvious example of the score gap actually resembling reality is '78 brass ensemble: Spirit scored a 14.0/15 and Devils were second with a 13.0. In other words, Spirit's ensemble performance was judged to be 6.67% better than the rest of the top 12! Going back another point from 2nd put you in 8th place.
If you want to talk about one score affecting another... 1973 again, 27th placed 3rd in brass execution in semis, but 16th in analysis. Played the hell out of lousy book. Meanwhile, at Finals, Vanguard placed 1st in analysis and 3rd in brass overall, but was 8th in execution. Great book, played like crap. Meanwhile, Blue Stars finished 2nd in brass execution, but 4th overall (behind Vanguard) because they had a 1.1 point differential in analysis. Stars' line was obviously better than Vanguard's, (Stars Field Brass score was 1st at 13.0, SCV was 9th at 11.9) but the huge gap (9%) in scoring for analysis minimized their actual edge in execution (5.6%). Field brass and ensemble brass were each 15 points, but were averaged together and added to the 10 points for analysis to get the overall brass score of 25. The gaps between execution scores (maxed out at 15) were smaller than the gaps on analysis (maxed out at 10).
What does all this accounting and math really mean? The difference in how well you played was not reflected in the scores to the same proportion as how much better your design was. A mediocre performance of a great design scored better than a great performance of a mediocre design.
Fast forward to 2022... show design still limits performance scores, just in a much more obvious way.
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Not a dry eye on the field... and the loudest chord in the history of drum corps.
RIP Jim
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2 hours ago, KVG_DC said:
Cruel. But we all instantly know that moment.
2 hours ago, MikeN said:Yeah - the semis version is far better. Still my favorite show though - they just channel the old school dinner club jazz orchestra vibe so well that year. -Mike
Crazy thing is their performance and GE scores were better for Finals than Semis... still don't get that.
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1 minute ago, Jeff Ream said:
Jeff Wilt?? he's still here
Whew! Glad I'm wrong there. I know they're playing Autumn Leaves and it wouldn't be right without him finishing it off.
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3 hours ago, Vidal28Rdg said:
I think a 99 would be unlikely for anyone this year too many captions where too many corps are competitive and can take points and tenths away from whoever wins
They changed the sheets and the judging criteria after '14. Too many people looked at those perfect scores and felt it had been a mistake.
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1 hour ago, Jeff Ream said:
i know many people involved in the admin, staff and performers in this group, and i look forward to seeing them all.
Unfortunately, aren't we missing one of THE biggest Bloo alumni who passed a few years ago? I seem to recall a post saying the featured sop screamer from '87-'88 Autumn Leaves passed.
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5 hours ago, OldSnareDrummer said:
425 members divided by what...48,000 SF of space on a football field. That's about a small bedroom size of space per MM to move around.
Better leave the props at home, Bloo.
A couple of years ago the JSU Marching Southerners hit the field with over 500 MM. They managed to do enough drill to make it very enjoyable, but the highlight was the sound... W O W ! ! ! ! ! !
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On 8/5/2022 at 5:11 PM, FaustianMachine said:
What DCI should do is maybe make a Kickstarter for physical media. If they sell X amount, they have the funds to produce the items, and you can sign up for individual items or bundles so they know how many to produce instead of just making a blind bulk order.
I'm proud of my physical media collection as a whole; almost 1200 Blu-Rays and almost 200 4Ks, plus a bunch of CDs that I rotate through. In my DCI collection, I've got everything from 2000 forward, having to pay eBay prices for the pre-LOS CDs and the 2009 Blu-Ray. I already dislike how I don't have a physical copy of the 2021 shows, but I'd be upset if that continues into 2022, especially if we're setting up for a historic year for placements on top of the organizations 50th anniversary.
I guess I'm new school? We only have physical media because the dvd player in the van doesn't do streaming or connect to a phone. My blu-ray player has been used twice in the past year, and yet we watch tv and movies all the time... Vudu, Hulu, Peacock... if you look around you can watch 1940's WB cartoons or last week's Love Island. Physical media for today's programming is a waste.
Now, that being said, I own the entire DCI Legacy cd set (bought it the week it came out) plus every cd set of Finals through 2016 except for '07, and I have the DVD's of that. I also have the bluray special editions of the DCI Champions and few other dvd's.
Considering how little value is put on actually playing horns anymore, I can see why DCI would quit doing physical media.
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On 8/6/2022 at 10:18 AM, DFA1970 said:
You said it right. It's 2022 and this is drum corp. No more military style marching.
and the activity is much the lesser for it...
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4 hours ago, MikeRapp said:
I find this pretty unbelievable, honestly. You’re telling me that judges can judge a show by tenths of a point from one night to the next, based on just their own intuition? I don’t buy it.I find this pretty unbelievable, honestly. You’re telling me that judges can judge a show by tenths of a point from one night to the next, based on just their own intuition? I don’t buy it.
I remember watching BD in '14 and pointing out the places where the lines weren't straight, the curves had bumps and the intervals were not uniform... the FIRST time I ever saw the show. Same thing with Scouts in '88 after the drum break. If you've watched marching units for a few years, you know when something's wrong.
A Modest Proposal
in DCI World Class Corps Discussions
Posted
It's cliché, but Dave Ramsey it... have an emergency reserve that can only be accessible, by vote of the BoD, to get the corps through tour and home if the money runs out. Once you tap it, the first revenue that comes in refills the reserve until it's full again. That's how my family has survived my wife working less than 40% of the time the last 3 years.