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TV Can’t Save Drum Corps


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No flammaster, whats going on in Dayton has more developed melodic content

:tongue:/>

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So,... To increase butts in the seats, make the DCI activity more accessible to many, many corps; create a situation where the major top corps do not see each other collectively until Finals; allow the fans the fun suspense of comparing summer scores from various shows to figure out potential final placement scenarios; have the great wonderful Finals at the end of the season; and for those who cannot afford to attend Finals broadcast the Finals, or a portion thereof, using the current technology available. Hmmmm... sounds eerily familiar? Or am I just experiencing deja vu?

No, and I didn't imply any of that at all. You did.

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No, and I didn't imply any of that at all. You did.

a) You stated that drum corps is an activity for people who marched drum corps. That's all it will ever be.

b) You also stated that nobody is ever going to get more fans by broadcasting drum corps on TV, partly because new fans will never really understand the experience of the performance via television.

c) You wrote that there are already far too many regionals, all of which dilute the "specialness" of Finals, which is really just a three-day regional.

d) You agreed that the 'major' factor in the drum corps dwindling audience is directly related to fewer and fewer drum corps in DCI providing opportunities for members to march.

e) You also agreed that to you DCI will eventually need to really downsize the venues because just 7 corps will not yield many people who march, which will in turn not yield many people in the stands.

f) And you wrote that if this occurs in DCI it will regress to the minimum viable product.

So, by ‘inference;’ a reader would thus conclude from your statements that : Things would be far better for DCI by making it more accessible to many, many corps; creating a situation where the major top corps did not see each other collectively until Finals would increase the specialness of Finals; DCI having the great wonderful DCI Finals at the end of the season where many, many, many corps participate would bring in more butts in the seats; and for those who cannot afford to attend Finals broadcast the Finals, or a portion thereof, using the current technology available other than television.

Edited by Stu
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No flammaster, whats going on in Dayton has more developed melodic content

:tongue:/>/>/>

Must be staff with those #### All Age ties..... :devil:

Just trying to picture Rich T holding it in with HS aged females.... :rolleyes:

Edited by JimF-LowBari
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If you combine your statement, "Drum corps is an activity for people who marched drum corps. That's all it will ever be. and that is ok", with your agreement of, "Yeah." as it applies to less corps means less in the audience, along with your statement, "I suspect that eventually only the top tier (G7 or TOC or whatever you want to call it)."... the logical conclusion to be drawn here is that to you DCI will eventually need to really downsize the venues because just 7 corps will not yield many people who march, which will in turn not yield many people in the stands.

That's the problem. Right now the activity is struggling and the last of the 80s era alumni, the last period when there were many corps, (hence alumni) are aging. While this group declines through death, disinterest, etc., the activity will enter a period of acute crisis. The activity is now no longer attracting enough of a critical mass to ensure its future. Combine this with weak appeal to the general public, little to no ties to local communities, and the costs of 150 member corps you have a disastrous situation.

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So, by ‘inference;’ a reader would thus conclude from your statements that : Things would be far better for DCI by making it more accessible to many, many corps; creating a situation where the major top corps did not see each other collectively until Finals would increase the specialness of Finals; DCI having the great wonderful DCI Finals at the end of the season where many, many, many corps participate would bring in more butts in the seats; and for those who cannot afford to attend Finals broadcast the Finals, or a portion thereof, using the current technology available other than television.

Then that would be a poor inference.

The fallacy in your argument is that you assume that my definition of "better for DCI" is the same as yours. It is not.

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Then that would be a poor inference.

The fallacy in your argument is that you assume that my definition of "better for DCI" is the same as yours. It is not.

So, please define your interpretation of what is 'better' for DCI.

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I hate the argument that says "TV can't do this so we shouldn't do TV". It's the same argument used in Congress that if something can't completely solve a problem then its not even worth doing...

I wasn't saying that. I was saying the historical evidence indicates that TV isn't likely to spark a drum corps revival. The fact that we had that a national stage on PBS for all those years and yet failed to stem the decline in numbers and audience is as troublesome an indictment as I know for drum corps.

Think about it. Millions could watch live or recorded Madison in 75 or SCV in 88/89 and everything in between - and still the number of corps kept dwinding...

HH

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I wasn't saying that. I was saying the historical evidence indicates that TV isn't likely to spark a drum corps revival. The fact that we had that a national stage on PBS for all those years and yet failed to stem the decline in numbers and audience is as troublesome an indictment as I know for drum corps.

The first DCI Finals had a live audience in Whitewater of about 11,000 people. DCI went live on tv in 1975, and immediately added several million people viewing the Finals night. After six years of being on live television, DCI's audience in the stands at Montreal was 34,000 people, a 200% increase over the first non-televised event.

Despite the fact that many corps from the early 70s didn't make it to the end of the decade, the audience for DCI 's work increased. While no one can definitively say that televised Finals was responsible for this, clearly being on live tv every August didn't hurt the size of the audience for Finals and the amount of income generated by drum corps events.

Anyone looking for a revival of small town, local drum corps who can compete at the DCI level is wasting time. School marching bands are filling that niche already, and most of the kids participating at that level don't have the interest in doing it at the DCI national touring level. The better question is what can be done to increase the overall audience and the net revenues for DCI, so that the organization can do a better job of promoting and paying the corps that it already has. If they can't do that, they'll end up losing some of those corps either through exhaustion or attrition.

You don't worry about adding teams to your league if the first concern is losing teams who are already playing. Adding a live tv component to the mix right now would have the ability to start re-building public awareness of what DCI does, and give DCI a rationale for seeking major corporate sponsorship. Failing to do it will continue on the path of simply peddling the product to the same dwindling audience every year, and you can do your own projections on the net result of that approach.

Edited by Slingerland
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