Is this proposal economically moral?

[treadstone]

While I have a great deal of respect for the organizations involved, I agree with you. What fascinates me most is the CEO of YEA dealing from a stance of conflicting missions.

The YEA website states: "Youth Education in the Arts provides programs which allow thousands of talented performers to participate in pageantry events around the continent", yet the recent actions of the CEO would actually diminish such opportunities for thousands of young people. Why? Because this proposal would diminish economic viability for all, but the most elite drum corps.

So, on one hand while YEA professes to have the interests of THOUSANDS of young people at heart - if you do the math it is more like 1,050 to be exact.. Granted, USSBA offers a great band competition experience; I am addressing the experience for those that choose to move on to this more intensive level. It gets better, under the YEA umbrella is the U. S. Scholastic Band Association which now serves a much wider geographic base. Many of these kids in USSBA come from all levels of economic status. The G7 proposal, which BY ASSOCIATION is supported by YEA, means that YEA cares about its performers TO A POINT. I find it ironic that YEA would serve to get a bunch of young performers excited about he pageantry arts and then LIMIT THEIR OPTIONS. Of course, the Cadets would get the people and money they need, which an unstated, yet implicit goal. I know plenty of people that would not have had the worthwhile drum corps experience they did if the G7 proposal had existed and was adopted years ago.

Since only a select percentage of USSBA performers would ever qualify for corps from the G7, this means those USSBA performers that want a decent drum corps experience have diminished economic possibilities from the same organization (YEA) that crafted this statement: Youth Education in the Arts provides programs which allow thousands of talented performers to participate in pageantry events around the continent

Does this mean that the YEA statement will be changed to: "Youth Education in the Arts provides programs which allow talented performers to participate in pageantry events around the continent and when the get ready to do drum corps we'll only offer a situation of economic equality to 1050 of them"?

Jason

[mobrien]

Playing Devil's Advocate (and donning my flame-proof suit...)

Is it economically moral for a dozen or more "World Class" corps to consistently benefit from an organization for which they generate very little revenue?

Stop. Read that question again. Take your emotions out of it, and answer the question honestly before you go on.

===

Pure reality - if a DCI show rolled into town with Pioneer, Academy, Jersey Surf, Spirit, and Crossmen, would they be as likely to sell out as if they had Pioneer, Spirit, Jersey Surf - and BD, PR, and Cadets?

DCI is putting together their own shows now that directly compete with shows sponsored by some of the member corps, making it harder for those member corps' shows to get A-list lineups. Whose interest is served there - the corps', or DCI's?

The 7 are talking about making their "super shows" (or whatever they call) them co-operative ventures where they invest the time and capital to produce, and still reward DCI with 1/8th of the proceeds in exchange for publicizing them. Can someone explain a rationale for DCI having access to MORE dollars for those events, if the corps themselves are producing them and taking the risk?

Leaving off the fact that I see two of the seven as being a little presumptuous (Crown is hot now, but c'mon, a few years ago they were an 8th place corps, and Bluecoats are consistent, but not exactly title contenders), at least I can see that all 7 have taken some risks over the years and that they are winners, in part, because they're thinking big and figuring out how to make the big ideas work. Love them or hate the 7, the truth is that most of the rest of the field are happy with "me too" copycat approaches rather than trying to do things so different that they become draws in and of themselves.

The lassitude or limitations of the bottom half of the DCI World Class corps has to be taken into consideration at one point or another. If it turns out that their positions are that "we're about teaching, not about winning", then that's great - but it also means that they should be competing in a different circuit than the corps at the top, who are about teaching how to win. High school football teams don't compete against Div 1 NCAA teams - there's no reason why some corps who are, for lack of a better analogy, high school corps, should be competing against title contending college corps while benefitting, financially, from the marketing power and audience draw that the college corps bring to the equation.

I don't agree with a number of elements in the original proposal, but the worst of them got knocked out when the Board was (correctly) reshuffled to level the field when it comes to fair consideration of the proposal. But I find it harder and harder to ignore the fact that these corps have demonstrated programming balls that consistently drive fan interest and generate revenues for ALL of DCI, and that it's reasonable to consider that they have a legitimate complaint with continuing to do business as usual in the years ahead.

Edited May 30, 2010 by mobrien

[Big Bad Bari]

What I do agree with in the G-7 proposal is that WE are never going to get people who are not already Drum Corps fans, are not little bobby's parents watching him out there playing his trumpet and are not alumni, to them sit through a 5 hour drum corps show that is 50% entertainment and 50% watching people schlep crap on and off the field! So unless somebody thinks of something quick you will not be marching anywhere for anybody!

Also maybe we could help out by doing entertaining shows so that people will want to come and pay for the enjoyment of watching us. I understand that there are a lot of people out there who think that the entertainment value of Drum Corps is not an issue... So where are the new fans who are not your relatives and co-marchers? The G-7 have noticed that DCI is about to fail! Have you?

[DC Guy]

What I do agree with in the G-7 proposal is that WE are never going to get people who are not already Drum Corps fans, are not little bobby's parents watching him out there playing his trumpet and are not alumni, to them sit through a 5 hour drum corps show that is 50% entertainment and 50% watching people schlep crap on and off the field! So unless somebody thinks of something quick you will not be marching anywhere for anybody!

Also maybe we could help out by doing entertaining shows so that people will want to come and pay for the enjoyment of watching us. I understand that there are a lot of people out there who think that the entertainment value of Drum Corps is not an issue... So where are the new fans who are not your relatives and co-marchers? The G-7 have noticed that DCI is about to fail! Have you?

Great post Tony ... cut's right to the "meat".

There's the "entertainment value" of the larger corps vs. the "family values of 'let's watch little Bobby perform'" ... those should be 2 different types of shows, just as Las Vegas shows are different from Community Theater.

I can't agree more ... I HATE spending a lot of time watching the "crap schleping". That's gotta go. I came to watch drum corps, not the Bekins movers.

And finally ... I do think the G7 know something about successfully running drum corps ... they know the intimate workings of DCI, and probably have a lot more information that all of DCP posters put together!

Again ... great post!

[audiodb]

Playing Devil's Advocate (and donning my flame-proof suit...)

Is it economically moral for a dozen or more "World Class" corps to consistently benefit from an organization for which they generate very little revenue?

Straw man.

Last time I checked, DCI was a cooperative venture that generates revenue. I don't see individual corps generating revenue and handing it over to DCI (actually, it's the exact opposite).

Pure reality - if a DCI show rolled into town with Pioneer, Academy, Jersey Surf, Spirit, and Crossmen, would they be as likely to sell out as if they had Pioneer, Spirit, Jersey Surf - and BD, PR, and Cadets?

(yawn)

Let's try this again. DCI is a cooperative venture that generates revenue via marketing a competitive league. As in any competitive league, a contest between the most recently winning teams might draw more attention than a contest between recent losing teams....but that is not a measure of the value of a team. As soon as winners and losers exchange places in the standings, the focus of attention shifts as well.

And, most importantly, the major league leaders owe their status to the major league, without which they would be neither "major league" nor "leaders".

DCI is putting together their own shows now that directly compete with shows sponsored by some of the member corps, making it harder for those member corps' shows to get A-list lineups. Whose interest is served there - the corps', or DCI's?

Seeing that DCI is "the corps", I guess the answer is "both".

The 7 are talking about making their "super shows" (or whatever they call) them co-operative ventures where they invest the time and capital to produce, and still reward DCI with 1/8th of the proceeds in exchange for publicizing them. Can someone explain a rationale for DCI having access to MORE dollars for those events, if the corps themselves are producing them and taking the risk?

Perhaps that is justifiable compensation for the various conflicts of interest when seven corps conspire to develop shows in conflict with DCI's tour schedule coordination. Maybe it's not sufficient compensation....

Leaving off the fact that I see two of the seven as being a little presumptuous (Crown is hot now, but c'mon, a few years ago they were an 8th place corps, and Bluecoats are consistent, but not exactly title contenders), at least I can see that all 7 have taken some risks over the years and that they are winners, in part, because they're thinking big and figuring out how to make the big ideas work.

All seven are presumptuous, to think they are worth any more than other corps simply due to recent contest results.

Love them or hate the 7, the truth is that most of the rest of the field are happy with "me too" copycat approaches rather than trying to do things so different that they become draws in and of themselves.

Oh, I see. The other corps just aren't trying.

The lassitude or limitations of the bottom half of the DCI World Class corps has to be taken into consideration at one point or another. If it turns out that their positions are that "we're about teaching, not about winning", then that's great - but it also means that they should be competing in a different circuit than the corps at the top, who are about teaching how to win. High school football teams don't compete against Div 1 NCAA teams - there's no reason why some corps who are, for lack of a better analogy, high school corps,

psst - you desperately need a better analogy there....

should be competing against title contending college corps while benefitting, financially, from the marketing power and audience draw that the college corps bring to the equation.

I'm sorry....where is that "audience draw" quantified? We need to know precisely which corps create which revenue.

I don't agree with a number of elements in the original proposal, but the worst of them got knocked out when the Board was (correctly) reshuffled to level the field when it comes to fair consideration of the proposal. But I find it harder and harder to ignore the fact that these corps have demonstrated programming balls that consistently drive fan interest and generate revenues for ALL of DCI, and that it's reasonable to consider that they have a legitimate complaint with continuing to do business as usual in the years ahead.

If they don't think that a collective leveraging of youth charities is in their best interest, and would rather go on their own, they are free to give it a shot. Star of Indiana got to that point, decided to "turn pro", and did so. They didn't hang around making hostile-takeover-of-DCI proposals for 14 years.

[garfield]

They didn't hang around making hostile-takeover-of-DCI proposals for 14 years.

This whole post is great, but this last line closes the book, once and for all.

[mobrien]

Sorry, audiodb, but if you see the lower tier World Class corps as really operating on the same level of performance and show design as the top tier corps, then you are generous to a fault. They're not. I wish it were different; I wish that some of those who are hanging around year after year without ever taking the steps to move into the top ranks would get a fire lit under themselves and be really ballsy from a programming standpoint, but it doesn't happen. That being the case, the next most obvious solution to that stagnation is to simply create a separate level of activity where the focus is on teaching rather than performing, the thing that many of them are already doing anyway.

You're old enough to know that DCI was never designed to be the one agency that managed all of junior drum corps. It was designed to allow the most successful corps of the early 70s to have control over their competitive and financial destinies by allowing the top corps - not all corps, but THE TOP corps - to determine their own rules and set their own pay standards.

This proposal is simply a return to that philosophy. It's not personal - it's business. Twelve member corps back in the day of 200 drum corps was a tiny sliver of the entire activity - a much smaller percentage of all corps than these 7 would be if they were the new "top 12". As with the original DCI, membership in the group would be open to those who earned their way in via superior performance, so there's still a "merit" element to membership.

Not seeing the value of the major corps toward the overall bottom line of DCI is a pretty serious oversight. Believing that they're just 6 or 7 among equals, and that every World Class corps has the same economic impact on the overall revenues of the DCI organization is a Panglossian view that overlooks the obvious - the other directors felt so threatened by the possibility that these 7 really might close off the DCI organization from revenues they would create that they stepped in to try and keep them yoked to DCI as much as they could.

The high school football to NCAA analogy is completely apt. Find another analogy to explain the disparity in performance year in and year out between the top corps and those at the other end of the World Class spectrum - seems clear to me that it's a combination of funding base, age and experience of performers, and overall focus of the instructional staff. There's nothing wrong with what Pioneer, Academy, et al are doing - they're performing a very valuable service for their members and to the drum corps community as a whole. But there's a real question as to whether the corps that aren't trying to compete for titles should have that much voice in making the rules for those who are. Doesn't it make sense to give them their own division that would allow them to set standards that would allow them to achieve within their own like-minded peers?

So to flip the question around, is it economically moral for one group to be required to carry a disproportionate amount of responsibility for creating revenues that are then distributed to others who don't seem as able or interested in generating the same types of overall dollars for their shared organization? Maybe there's an argument to support it, but at this point, all I'm seeing is "the G7 are greedy", blah blah blah, with very few willing to try and see the current situation through their eyes.

Edited May 31, 2010 by mobrien

[dcpacheco]

"if you see the lower tier World Class corps as really operating on the same level of performance and show design as the top tier corps, then you are generous to a fault. They're not. I wish it were different; I wish that some of those who are hanging around year after year without ever taking the steps to move into the top ranks would get a fire lit under themselves and be really ballsy from a programming standpoint, but it doesn't happe

From my vantage point, though, the 8-23 corps of today are much better than the equivalent corps of the past. I certainly think that the entire activity has progressed nicely over the years.

[audiodb]

Sorry, audiodb, but if you see the lower tier World Class corps as really operating on the same level of performance and show design as the top tier corps, then you are generous to a fault. They're not.

They're operating at roughly "the level of performance and show design" that their scores suggest. In some cases, like Boston and Blue Stars, that means they are at a comparable level with some G7 units. Don't think so? Take your grievances to the guys/gals in the green shirts.

I wish it were different; I wish that some of those who are hanging around year after year without ever taking the steps to move into the top ranks would get a fire lit under themselves and be really ballsy from a programming standpoint, but it doesn't happen. That being the case, the next most obvious solution to that stagnation is to simply create a separate level of activity where the focus is on teaching rather than performing, the thing that many of them are already doing anyway.

Now, this is one of the things that makes no sense to me. Again, you speak as if corps 8-23 don't even try to compete with corps 1-7 1-6 & 9. Ridiculous. There's nothing stopping a corps from hiring staff with proven top-7 abilities to guide your corps upward (Crown, Blue Stars), and there's nothing stopping unproven staff from proving themselves top-7 worthy with an up-and-coming corps (Bluecoats, Boston).

But you will stop all of that if you create a separate division.

You're old enough to know that DCI was never designed to be the one agency that managed all of junior drum corps. It was designed to allow the most successful corps of the early 70s to have control over their competitive and financial destinies by allowing the top corps - not all corps, but THE TOP corps - to determine their own rules and set their own pay standards.

And that was it's fatal flaw.

Had DCI been created to solve the primary problem (unsustainable touring) for the corps involved (the touring corps), it would have been more successful. Instead, they provided support for corps based on arbitrary competitive results. Some of those corps weren't touring much, and/or weren't ready to tour much. Other touring corps were excluded from DCI membership support, yet were then coaxed into filling shows at less pay (funny how those corps aren't around anymore).

This proposal is simply a return to that philosophy.

A return to the fatal flaw of elitism.

It's not personal - it's business. Twelve member corps back in the day of 200 drum corps was a tiny sliver of the entire activity - a much smaller percentage of all corps than these 7 would be if they were the new "top 12". As with the original DCI, membership in the group would be open to those who earned their way in via superior performance, so there's still a "merit" element to membership.

Who runs a business like that? That makes about as much sense as bringing the managers of a company outside, and whoever runs across the parking lot fastest gets to be CEO.

Not seeing the value of the major corps toward the overall bottom line of DCI is a pretty serious oversight.

Not seeing the value of DCI to the "major corps" is a pretty serious oversight, too. There are no "major corps" without that comparison to "other corps".

Believing that they're just 6 or 7 among equals, and that every World Class corps has the same economic impact on the overall revenues of the DCI organization is a Panglossian view that overlooks the obvious -

....which is that DCI has an impact too. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

The high school football to NCAA analogy is completely apt. Find another analogy to explain the disparity in performance year in and year out between the top corps and those at the other end of the World Class spectrum - seems clear to me that it's a combination of funding base, age and experience of performers, and overall focus of the instructional staff.

....and the fact that we pay winners more than the other corps, thus tilting the competitive field further in their favor.

There's nothing wrong with what Pioneer, Academy, et al are doing - they're performing a very valuable service for their members and to the drum corps community as a whole. But there's a real question as to whether the corps that aren't trying to compete for titles (snip)

Not worth responding to such an insulting and ignorant comment....except to note that this sort of derision is becoming more common these days.

So to flip the question around, is it economically moral for one group to be required to carry a disproportionate amount of responsibility for creating revenues that are then distributed to others who don't seem as able or interested in generating the same types of overall dollars for their shared organization? Maybe there's an argument to support it, but at this point, all I'm seeing is "the G7 are greedy", blah blah blah, with very few willing to try and see the current situation through their eyes.

I'm still waiting for you to show me which revenue the G7 created....

[TerriTroop]

Sorry, audiodb, but if you see the lower tier World Class corps as really operating on the same level of performance and show design as the top tier corps, then you are generous to a fault. They're not. I wish it were different; I wish that some of those who are hanging around year after year without ever taking the steps to move into the top ranks would get a fire lit under themselves and be really ballsy from a programming standpoint, but it doesn't happen.

I'll jump in here, again, like I always do, to make a point about why this particular complaint is so annoying to me.

Over the years, judging has become increasingly based on design and less on execution. No, I don't want the old tick system back, but the reason we have this problem is that the competition has become less about the kids in the corps working with what they've got and more about the minds driving the design. It is WAY out of balance, IMO. Now we have a situation in which design teams (via caption heads) get to pre-sell the show to the green shirted folks before the show even starts. I think it's time to create more parity via adjudication changes instead of focusing on who is and is not worthy of inclusion in some arbitrary 7-corps super league.

Why is this important? Because if we take away some of the extra bonus points for design and place them back in the world of execution, I believe we would see a LOT more movement in all of the tiers. Movement in placement is EXCITEMENT for all. And movement based on execution rather than design gives the kids doing the job on the field a lot more control over their product.

The "supercorps" have created for themselves this arbitrary status via judging changes and design initiatives. Now that we've got a change in the BoD, maybe we can bring the driving force of competition back to where I believe it belongs - weighted more toward who is doing the running around instead of who is moving the dots on a computer.