Jeff Ream Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Well... alright. How about a Different show concept... A mix of corps, bottom, top, all age, open. A day/night event where they are randomly selected to participate. The kicker is that: 1. No corps are judged 2. Performance order is randomly drawn (you don't know the order till the show starts. There is anticipation about which corps will walk through the gate next!) -Nothing too formal about it, just performance after performance, (oh and WITH announcer hype of course) I'm gonna call it... THE TOUR DE CORPS! I mean, this would only happen in a few random places, maybe once every 3 weeks in the mix of the TOC shows and the local and regional shows. well the judging criteria makes it tough for random order when you have all age, OC and WC together. and, IMO, a show without scores usually doesnt draw well. oh and All age corps can't exactly pick up and tour unless it's a weekend. that job thing 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fsubone Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 ok, we gotta stop agreeing here. People will start to worry Hey, it's not the first time. We had a streak of agreeing over the summer about Blue Devils' show, much to the chagrin of Plan9.... But that's behind us now, and we can agree on more stuff now. I do think DCI needs work if it really wants to survive. It needs to start advertising itself. I remember in '09, we were front page news in a couple of the small towns we went to, and on the news once or twice too. Now, why couldn't DCI do that? Contact reporters for the TV stations and newspapers in places of major shows or regionals, and really get the word out. The old AmericaFest show was a great way for DCI to show off itself, but that show was really a fireworks show with drum corps backup. Maybe if they worked it the other way around, it could work well for them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plan9 Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Hey, it's not the first time. We had a streak of agreeing over the summer about Blue Devils' show, much to the chagrin of Plan9.... But that's behind us now, and we can agree on more stuff now. I do think DCI needs work if it really wants to survive. It needs to start advertising itself. I remember in '09, we were front page news in a couple of the small towns we went to, and on the news once or twice too. Now, why couldn't DCI do that? Contact reporters for the TV stations and newspapers in places of major shows or regionals, and really get the word out. The old AmericaFest show was a great way for DCI to show off itself, but that show was really a fireworks show with drum corps backup. Maybe if they worked it the other way around, it could work well for them. What the hell is this....DCP or the campfire girls singing "cumbia"! Man up and start hating each other like proper belligerents! I feel so alone...abandoned...Mommy! I'm melting! P.S. The judges had a streak of agreeing over the summer about the Blue Devils show as well....what a coincidence! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audiodb Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 And no, I'm not exaggerating. I have been at shows where we were the only Open Class act there, and there may have been between 20 and 50 people in the stands. By the time BD or SCV came on at the end, the stands were pretty well full, and they progressively had been filling in over the course of the show. That has not been my experience, especially out West. Even at the 16-corps shows, when start time is 5:00 and it is 100 degrees out, there are hundreds of people in the stands for the first of eight or more open-class corps. In more hospitable conditions, the entire open-class segment could be treated to an audience of 1500. The only DCI-sanctioned events I recall having less than 50 in the seats were weekday preliminary shows for open-class. Do you have a way to fix that? Ban the souvies to another area, like they did at Finals, where they were on another level of the venue? And couldn't it actually be that people want to come to the show for the top corps? Can't it be the simple answer, instead of trying to come up with all of these other reasons of what it could be? I'm sorry that it isn't simply one factor at play, but I'm not making this up....this is all from personal experience. Traffic, both vehicular (on the roads) and pedestrian (at the gate and in the aisles), sometimes prevents people from getting to their seats on time. Some people can't just leave work early whenever there's a drum corps show in town. Positioning of warmups, souvies, concessions and other things can siphon people off on their way into the venue, or even draw crowds that further constrict pedestrian traffic. And like I said, people who can't sit still for the whole show might choose to sit for the top corps, if they have that advance knowledge. Crowd behavior is a combination of these and other factors. There is no ultimate "fix" to all that, as we can't make traffic and work commitments vanish. We might have some control over staging of warmups, souvies and concessions at some venues, though. And we also have the option of varying performance order so that the same corps don't go on first all the time. Better yet, if we had greater competitive parity, fans wouldn't KNOW who to skip. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audiodb Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 the marketing IMO goes both ways as I said. yes DCI in house only pushes the top. But I think the corps could do a lot better marketing themselves. I think if both were reversed, you may start to see more fans in the stands the whole time. I certainly agree that we should promote all corps. But to be fair, DCI doesn't just market the top corps. I see a fair amount of feature blurbs and photos of world-class 9-23. Show coverage, event promotion and branding all include the 9-23. Even the new "download of the week" has picked corps outside of the top eight 2 out of 3 times so far. Of course, the TOC show concept is top-8 focused.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audiodb Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 The NFL markets "all" because fans are not drawn just by quality alone. That's pretty perceptive. I think the same can be said for drum corps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimF-LowBari Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 (edited) I certainly agree that we should promote all corps. But to be fair, DCI doesn't just market the top corps. I see a fair amount of feature blurbs and photos of world-class 9-23. Show coverage, event promotion and branding all include the 9-23. Even the new "download of the week" has picked corps outside of the top eight 2 out of 3 times so far. Has the current level of 9-23 and/or OC promotion changed over the last few years or has it been fairly consistant? Have no idea but thought crossed (what's left of) my mind as I read the post. Edited January 25, 2011 by JimF-LowBari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audiodb Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Not to nit-pick, but I would stipulate (without looking it up) that NONE of the shows being replaced with TOC events had ALL of the Top 8 corps in performance. And if placements change from one year to the next, the TOC shows won't have ALL of the top 8 either. It might not give members more performances, per say (we'd have to get someone to correlate the data of a ToC corps' 2010 schedule v 2011), but it will give them more competition. In what sense? Last I checked, 8 is less than 23. Or at the very least, it will give them alternative performances that aren't the typical DCI shows. That is true. Of course, clinics accomplish that too....and corps outside the top 8 are allowed to participate. Regardless, it gives the fans a chance to see the Top 8 at the same show, something that rarely, if ever, happens outside of the big all-inclusive focus shows or Championship week. Those focus shows and championship week provided seven showdowns of the top 8. That's not what I would call "rarely". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Corps Guy Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 OK, let’s go back to the original question and get the "CURRENT" answer. This was a request for an explanation. I believe they wanted to know what the "CURRENT" and "APPROVED" G8 is and how will it be implemented. Arguing over what didn't pass, however important, is not relevant to this year. Please post the "APPROVED" G8 process so that it can be understood by those who want to know and leave the "UNAPPROVED" off with no interpretation or comments. Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audiodb Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 A show with the top 8 from the previous year will draw a bigger crowd than a "standard" line up. Count on it. But even if we assume you are correct....that is not what we should be asking. What I would rather know is whether a top-8 show and a non-top-8 show would outdraw two balanced lineup shows with the same corps. This is no different than the eliete "top 12" that's been basically doing forever what the TOC shows do just on a different scale. Um, no, it is different now. Here's why.... Every "finals" show involving top 12 over the years or involving ANY kind of prelims finals set up has "excluded" those who didn't make it in. "Exclusion" was not the point. The original purpose of the prelim/final format was to cope with the enormous number of corps entering AL Nationals in the 1920s. Contest organizers felt that they could not evaulate the full 15-minute programs of 60 or more corps all at once and reliably determine the champion. So corps presented shorter programs in prelims to enable judges to evaluate them all in one day, and select the ones that actually had a shot at winning. With competition being what it was back then, it was felt necessary to have 12 contestants selected for finals to ensure that the eventual champion would be present. Understandably, the purpose of the top-12 finals has changed over the years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.