troopers1 Posted April 22, 2013 Share Posted April 22, 2013 Looking at the history of the activity on TV doesn't give much hope that it is a financially smart choice to try to get back a broadcast. Cook Group sponsored the broadcast for years. Once they dropped out, we couldn't sponsor ourselves, and we didn't deliver pledges / donations like any number of cheesed out '50's doo-wop reunions (that take three cameras and one hotel ballroom to stage) we were gone. ESPN had us on, but we had to pay for it. I don't know that money was well spent. Nothing really changed for us, did it? They can get much cheaper inventory from any number of small athletic conferences or associations that are much cheaper to produce and actually draw eyeballs in sports bars and garage TV's around the country. I personally don't think we can make an understandable production on the small screen in a stadium. Football teams play on the same size field, but the action is focused in a couple of small areas, which the camera can focus on. Replays happen. You almost never see the entire field. But the entire impact of one of our shows requires at least half the visual space on the field. The canvas is too big for the frame we would try to put it in. Blast may have had the best setup for TV. The scale is perfect, you can see the whole production in one shot. And they had a succesful PBS run for a while. But those Blast guys are smart, smart people, and they couldn't really break into TV with a much more suitable product. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slingerland Posted April 22, 2013 Share Posted April 22, 2013 If you're having to pay the costs of your airtime, you're not being broadcast, you're buying commercial airtime. The ESPN approach was a bad idea in the first place. The problem was that DCI never found anyone else to replace Cook Group. If anything, I imagine that if they had been more aggressive about lining up additional sponsors back then that Cook might have kept some money in the program, but no one wants to be the lone pole supporting the tent - it's way more responsibility than any sponsor/donor needs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BRASSO Posted April 22, 2013 Share Posted April 22, 2013 (edited) If you're having to pay the costs of your airtime, you're not being broadcast, you're buying commercial airtime. The ESPN approach was a bad idea in the first place. The problem was that DCI never found anyone else to replace Cook Group. If anything, I imagine that if they had been more aggressive about lining up additional sponsors back then that Cook might have kept some money in the program, but no one wants to be the lone pole supporting the tent - it's way more responsibility than any sponsor/donor needs. " If you build it, they will come " This is from the movie, " Field of Dreams " . Its refers to building a baseball diamond out in the cornfields of Iowa. Symbolically and metophorically, it refers to the belief that even without proper marketing, even dead people will come back in droves to something built out in the boondocks if its found to be interesting. Edited April 22, 2013 by BRASSO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slingerland Posted April 22, 2013 Share Posted April 22, 2013 (edited) " If you build it, they will come " This is from the movie, " Field of Dreams " . Its refers to building a baseball diamond out in the cornfields of Iowa. Symbolically and metophorically, it refers to the belief that even without proper marketing, even dead people will come back in droves to something built out in the boondocks if its found to be interesting. Which has nothing to do with actual real world marketing. In the real world, you have to decide what you're going to do first, then find the people to support/purchase that product. You won't get sponsors to step up to support the cost of broadcast tv until you commit to getting back on broadcast tv in the first place, for the same reason that you won't get anyone to buy a product that you haven't actually started planning to produce. Edited April 22, 2013 by Slingerland Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perc2100 Posted April 22, 2013 Share Posted April 22, 2013 How, then, do you get those who have aged out of drum corps to keep watching drum corps? Clearly, right now, they're not. Mike No, it's not "clear" that those who have aged out are not watching drum corps. I think at best that is a hypothesis, and at worst you're projecting your own personal thoughts on to a much larger group of people with very little to no data or analysis to back up that claim. As far as real data analysis, DCI has said that their attendance has been UP in recent years as far as total attendance at all DCI-sponsored shows. I don't know what the numbers are of subscribers of Fan Network, but I think it's safe to say there are plenty of them, as well as plenty more who are PPV customers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perc2100 Posted April 22, 2013 Share Posted April 22, 2013 Which has nothing to do with actual real world marketing. In the real world, you have to decide what you're going to do first, then find the people to support/purchase that product. You won't get sponsors to step up to support the cost of broadcast tv until you commit to getting back on broadcast tv in the first place, for the same reason that you won't get anyone to buy a product that you haven't actually started planning to produce. Lol; I'm with ya Slingerland. Anyone who bases a business strategy off of dialog from a fictional movie about baseball-playing ghosts does not exactly have a sound strategy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BRASSO Posted April 22, 2013 Share Posted April 22, 2013 (edited) Which has nothing to do with actual real world marketing. True... this is what " symbolically and metophorically" means, ie that it has " nothing to do with actual, real world marketing ". In the " real world ", Venture Capitalists, Investors, Corporate Sponsors with a natural synergy with what you do, etc., will find you. They don't live in a cave somewhere. These folks are constantly on the lookout for possible alignments that " brands well " with what THEY do. If your " product " has been on the " market " for 40 years...especially where the " product " has been on national TV for decades,.... they know who you are. If the current edition of the product is believed to be undermarketed, or has investment return potential to Investors if marketed properly, to use the " Field of Dreams " movie metaphor, "they will walk thru the maze of vast cornfields " to find YOU ( DCI Drum Corps ). Edited April 22, 2013 by BRASSO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perc2100 Posted April 22, 2013 Share Posted April 22, 2013 TV broadcasting of DCI is not a sound decision in any sense of the word. Either: * DCI would have to pay total broadcasting costs, thus incurring a large expense with little/no quantifiable payoff. Or * DCI would need to find substantial sponsorship from groups to offset the cost to make the broadcast financially viable. The fact that this hasn't happened is pretty telling, and as much as some of us want to believe that a marching band activity that has zero connection to a higher profile mass-marketable entity (i.e. pro sports team, college, etc) the fact remains that there is little/no reason for businesses to finance the significant costs of TV broadcasting. My mom is an executive in charge of business banking for a pretty major bank. I talked to her quite a bit about trying to get her company to sponsor a drum corps or an Independent WGI unit and even though she knows my passions for the activity, has seen how profoundly music has affected me, and loves the activity, she said her business would not consider the sponsorship. There is no upside for a major business as far as publicity, and on the non-publicity angle (the actual "doing something good to do something good" reasoning) there are FAR more worthy non-profit organizations in their eyes: groups like cancer research, or larger organizations that affect millions of people. The very nature of drum corps, an independent organization that doesn't really cater to any community in a substantial way that's made up of young-adults typically not from the local community, makes it a difficult sell to executives. When a local business can instead choose to fund a myriad of local school organizations, it is a MUCH more attractive proposition than drum corps. Besides all of those hurdles, it is ludicrous for DCI to dump money into a costly venture where they can't quantify a return. Instead, they should be focusing on Fan Network, which is a money-making venture for them. DCI has total control over content & presentation, can do what they want as far as content (i.e. they don't have to be told by a network "the show's too long: edit it down by half"), and they get to keep any money made from subscriptions. The TV option is a nonissue at this point, and as the OP points out there was little quantifiable reward for the risky costs of broadcast. While my first exposure to the activity was PBS broadcasting, there are PLENTY of people who have fallen in love with drum corps who never saw it on TV. DCI should not waste resources on a TV broadcast, and should instead focus on Fan Network (AND LIVE STREAM WORLD FINALS ALREADY, ######!!!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KeithHall Posted April 22, 2013 Share Posted April 22, 2013 "And so the saga continues....'experts' in the drum corps world continue to bad mouth and put-down the dumb people of has-been drum corps. Yes us older people who marched in the 60's and 70's have no business in this forum anymore. The times have changed and we must move on now." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slingerland Posted April 22, 2013 Share Posted April 22, 2013 (edited) True... this is what " symbolically and metophorically" means, ie that it has " nothing to do with actual, real world marketing ". In the " real world ", Venture Capitalists, Investors, Corporate Sponsors with a natural synergy with what you do, etc., will find you. They won't 'find you" until you have something of value to offer first. Sergey and Larry had the idea of what and how to do Google before they got a dollar of venture capital money. No one recruited them and said "hey, can you guys start a new search engine site?" DCI won't find sponsors to underwrite the expense of being on tv until they can show the sponsors that they have the commitment to doing it. Edited April 22, 2013 by Slingerland Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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