Is DCI broken?

[audiodb]

All of whom had to fight to create and keep regional tours. All of whom had to deal with competitive and "peer" (for lack of a better word) fallout for it. But as you said, all of whom actually ended up better for it. You and I agree on that point. But they're still not competing with the big corps.

Academy, Crest and Surf are big corps. And they are competing with big corps (though perhaps not as well as you'd prefer).

DCI wants its corps to travel nationally, else selling Tour Event Partners on 4-corps shows gets a little silly. That push to have every corps tour like the Blue Devils (well, not this year - 24 shows ) is what I'm talking about.

Where is this "push" you refer to? "Full tour" is still defined as San Antonio to Indy....and you can still get into WC without even doing that "full tour".

Now, if individual corps were pushing themselves to tour like a G7 or die trying, that would be a problem. But again, there's no DCI rule compelling them to do so.

Not for me to speculate. Not gonna touch it.

Well, it was you who said DCI was killing corps, in this context.

I look at this from a competitive and tour perspective. I'll name names - I don't see the benefit of making Pioneer, Teal Sound, Jersey Surf, etc compete with the Cavaliers, Blue Devils and Crown. It makes no sense.

But no one is "making" them compete. Those corps all chose to move into world-class.

No more than making Revolution, Forte and Genesis compete with the Crossmen.

Or Oregon Crusaders and Thunder compete with Cascades....oh, wait.

We get in OC/WC that there's a clear difference in quality, mission and resources - there's no reason we can't draw a second line in there as well. (As DCI had previosly for how many years?)

I look at this from a different angle. I don't want to draw more lines. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced we need the line we have. Here's what I mean....

Once upon a time, drum corps did not have a class structure. Corps stratified themselves by choosing where they competed. If a corps was young or less ambitious, they would find a local circuit and stay there. Better or more audacious corps might add a trip to a major contest to that routine. Highly competitive corps would travel to a national championship contest each year, perhaps more than one, and might wander outside their immediate locale to lock horns with a comparable rival some other time during the season just for the competitive challenge. Geographical stratification had an elegant simplicity to it that I wish we could recapture today (sigh).

Even after "class A" spread all over to provide an additional method of stratification, corps still had the ability to determine their level of participation by where they traveled to compete. There were options available at all levels. Major regional circuits (DCM, DCE, DCW/PDCA) and DCI regionals provided a particular wealth of choices for intermediate corps.

Today, we've folded everything into the DCI tent, where there is simply no focus on developing local or regional alternatives. DCI is pretty much all about the national tour. We're lucky that they even offer two flavors of national touring (world-class and open-class), because DCI tends to focus and excel at only one division at a time.

I think corps could still stratify themselves even today. One could even argue that they already do, to whatever extent corps have freedom to choose between competing in WC/OC. But why must there be a WC and an OC? (Yeah, I get the whole voting/membership thing, but why must your competitive division be married to your voting status?) And what do the intermediate corps do in a two-class system? WC has over a dozen corps that tour 7-8 weeks, while open-class only provides a 2-week tour. What if your corps is located in some corner of the country that makes a 4-week tour more practical? (Notice how many of the limited-tour WC and more ambitious OC corps come from the edges of our national map.)

What on earth does voting rights have to do with it? Taking away shows actually equals taking away operational costs. I'm not getting the economics that doing 31 shows is more profitable than doing 16.

Sorry, I may not have been clear earlier, in referring to the G-7 proposal, I was addressing the idea of splitting off the top groups into their own tour - that's really all. As for pay or no pay, etc, I have no ideas on that front.

Ohhhhhhh. Well, if you refresh your memory on the particulars of the G7 proposal, you will see how I got the wrong impression. Their proposal did not establish a viable touring model for a middle division. In fact, it proposed the opposite by reserving all Fridays and Sundays for exclusive G7 shows, with all-inclusive focus events on Saturdays. Meaning, all the touring non-G7 corps would still have to do the same tour to be there Saturday, but be denied any revenue oportunities at the surrounding Friday/Sunday shows. And yes, those same corps would also have faced loss of voting power and a change in pay scale.

What you are suggesting is far different....

However, I do think adding a "middle class" to DCI would be a good thing for all.

OK. We're probably not that far apart, really. I would simply prefer that instead of creating new classes and herding corps into them against their will, we let corps chart out courses that fit their own unique circumstances. If you are suggesting an intermediate class that current WC corps can enter voluntarily, without losing DCI membership status or their position on the pay scale, that would be worthy of consideration.

[skywhopper]

That should be so, because the "stronger, richer corps" are the corps that are persuading people to pay a lot of money for tickets and internet streams. Which show do you think will have a larger audience? One featuring the Blue Devils, Cavaliers, and Cadets? or one featuring the Teal Sound, Pioneer, and Cascades?

I agree with you (about who sells the most tickets, not about who "should" get the more or less money in performance fees), but my point was not about who sells the tickets. It was about how much it costs to run a corps. It's the same, or nearly so, for Teal to tour as it is for Cadets. So, paying Teal less means they are less likely to survive. To the extent that the existence of the Teal Sounds of the world is good for the top corps, they should be willing to allow a fair share of the ticket revenue to go to the corps that may, by themselves, draw fewer ticket buyers.

This is simple basic economics 101. Supply and demand.

Supply and demand is a description of natural market tendencies, not a prescription for the success of a money-losing competitive arts league. And it's most definitely not a guide to ethical decision-making. While we can use economics to help understand the dilemmas of DCI and its member corps, the things you learn about guns and butter in Economics 101 are not going to help stop more mid-season blowups, or keep drum corps from shrinking year by year. And confusing *descriptions* of market behavior with moral commandments is exactly the wrong thing to do.

No corps in DCI is surviving on supply and demand alone, and the mission of DCI is to provide a meaningful summer competitive marching experience. Throwing the corps in the bottom tier to the wolves of the market is not in line with that mission, and does no favors to the top tier corps either.

Edited July 13, 2012 by skywhopper

[MikeN]

I think corps could still stratify themselves even today. One could even argue that they already do, to whatever extent corps have freedom to choose between competing in WC/OC. But why must there be a WC and an OC? (Yeah, I get the whole voting/membership thing, but why must your competitive division be married to your voting status?) And what do the intermediate corps do in a two-class system? WC has over a dozen corps that tour 7-8 weeks, while open-class only provides a 2-week tour. What if your corps is located in some corner of the country that makes a 4-week tour more practical? (Notice how many of the limited-tour WC and more ambitious OC corps come from the edges of our national map.)

I think you and I agree on this point - there's a subset of corps that are neither one nor the other.

Ohhhhhhh. Well, if you refresh your memory on the particulars of the G7 proposal, you will see how I got the wrong impression. Their proposal did not establish a viable touring model for a middle division.

Again, I agree. I probably didn't clarify enough. I agree with them in that I also think the "upper" class has grown so far from the "middle" class that they're essentially a separate division already. But I don't agree with blackouts for Friday/Saturday, either.

OK. We're probably not that far apart, really. I would simply prefer that instead of creating new classes and herding corps into them against their will, we let corps chart out courses that fit their own unique circumstances. If you are suggesting an intermediate class that current WC corps can enter voluntarily, without losing DCI membership status or their position on the pay scale, that would be worthy of consideration.

I would assign corps against their will, honestly, based on the needs of DCI and the various tours. There are many corps who declared for World Class that really shouldn't be there. (I get that it's a DCI failing more than an individual corps failing in this case.) I guess the problem is that the all-or-nothing approach is not really reflective of what's going on with the circuit as a whole. If a corps is going to participate in DCI, though, then they need to be assigned where they meet both the needs of the corps as well as DCI.

I'd like to see the divisions keep comparable pay scales, if not exactly identical for all groups. But I think that would also need to be researched a little deeper as well. And I'm ambivalent about voting rights - I'd defer to those more knowledgeable than me about it. My armchair analysis is that the corps should still have voting rights on on-field matters, but would prefer to see a stronger central organization run the business.

Mike

[audiodb]

I would assign corps against their will, honestly, based on the needs of DCI and the various tours.

OK....that's where we diverge.

Hey, one question about this comment below....

There are many corps who declared for World Class that really shouldn't be there.

How many WC fall into that category, in your view? And getting back to the above, how would the numbers in each division come together to make the tours practical?

[Jeff Ream]

I think you and I agree on this point - there's a subset of corps that are neither one nor the other.

Again, I agree. I probably didn't clarify enough. I agree with them in that I also think the "upper" class has grown so far from the "middle" class that they're essentially a separate division already. But I don't agree with blackouts for Friday/Saturday, either.

I would assign corps against their will, honestly, based on the needs of DCI and the various tours. There are many corps who declared for World Class that really shouldn't be there. (I get that it's a DCI failing more than an individual corps failing in this case.) I guess the problem is that the all-or-nothing approach is not really reflective of what's going on with the circuit as a whole. If a corps is going to participate in DCI, though, then they need to be assigned where they meet both the needs of the corps as well as DCI.

I'd like to see the divisions keep comparable pay scales, if not exactly identical for all groups. But I think that would also need to be researched a little deeper as well. And I'm ambivalent about voting rights - I'd defer to those more knowledgeable than me about it. My armchair analysis is that the corps should still have voting rights on on-field matters, but would prefer to see a stronger central organization run the business.

Mike

are you looking at scores or finances or both? because honestly, some of the highest scoring corps are the worst financially

[hammondbrass]

100% responsibility at the management. You take all the credit AND the blame when you're in charge.

Edited July 14, 2012 by hammondbrass

[InspaDave]

Teal Sounding folding mid-tour is sad, but by definition, the ball had to have been dropped by both DCI and the Teal Sound board of directors for something like this to happen out of the blue DURING the DCI tour.

This sucks for everyone, including the show sponsors. But DCI should have been on top of this before it happened. If DCI is somehow "not" supposed to be aware of a bad financial condition of a member corps, then the DCI system is broken, and it should get out of the way of the activity before it kills it off.

Point of fact, those Teal Sound kids should have never went on tour. They should have had a chance to march somewhere else, -- in January. How many DCI age outs just had their last season of drum corps ruined?

I'm sorry, but this is low rent business organization at its finest. How many corps do we need to lose to wake up here?

Lee Rudnicki

I knew that when I saw a possibly controversial post started by Lee Rudnicki that I would see no contributions from him other than the original post. Way to go Lee. You really know how to further discussion.

[XtremeBNDGK]

can we remind ourselves that Teal Sound did not "fold" or "close up shop." The Board of Directors decided to withdraw from the season early. That is all. Their financial woes are issues that they need to deal with before they can continue touring under the World Class mantra. They should take this opportunity to evaluate their situation and see what can/cannot be resolved, removed, renewed, and/or redone.