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re: Anymore?

Posted by: tmdonahue (tmdonahue@yahoo.com) 09:22 pm EST 11/18/14
In reply to: Anymore? - enoch10 08:47 pm EST 11/18/14

In our book, Stage Money (pages 36-37), we reported on a study by economists that found that a positive review in the NY Times, at least in the period studied, had no significant relationship to length of run.

The Broadway League conducts a marketing study each season. One of the questions asks what influenced the respondent's ticket purchase. The biggest influence is word of mouth. Advertising was number two. Reviews were number three.

The notion that the NY Times review has a great influence on show profitability may be a myth. Perhaps NY Times reviews have some impact on straight plays but not so much on musicals. Of course, sometimes the NY Times reviewer actually reflects the audience appeal of a show so the review might be expected to roughly correlate with success of a show.

Note that a number of successful musicals, including Wicked and Phantom, had mixed-to-negative reviews when they opened.


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re: Anymore?

Posted by: AlanScott 03:24 am EST 11/19/14
In reply to: re: Anymore? - tmdonahue 09:22 pm EST 11/18/14

One thing to remember: the longer a show runs, the less reviews matter because no one even remembers what they were like anymore, except people like us. And the people who come later in a run perhaps tend to be people who pay little attention to the reviews of new shows.

Reviews can be very important in a show getting to the point where they don't matter anymore.


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Trying Times

Posted by: WaymanWong 01:16 am EST 11/19/14
In reply to: re: Anymore? - tmdonahue 09:22 pm EST 11/18/14

Even New York Times' raves take a musical only so far. And one clear-cut case was the 2009-2010 Broadway season.

* Ben Brantley raved about ''Fela!'': ''Bill T. Jones' singular, sensational show. ... There has never been anything on Broadway like this production. ... You feel like you have been dancing with the stars.'' The Times also did followup pieces.

* Charles Isherwood raved about ''American Idiot'': ''As invigorating and ultimately as moving as anything I've seen on Broadway this season. Or maybe for a few seasons past.''

* But Isherwood panned ''Memphis'': ''Slick but formulaic. ... Barely generates enough heat to melt a vinyl record.'' (Other critics, though, praised it; AP's Michael Kuchwara: ''The very essence of a Broadway musical.'')

Yet ''Memphis'' overcame the Times pan. It won the Best Musical prize from the Outer Critics, Drama Desk and the Tonys, and ran for about 1,200 performances. (''American Idiot'' closed after 11 months; ''Fela!'' ran for about 500 shows.)


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I didn't think so... nm

Posted by: Genealley 11:03 pm EST 11/18/14
In reply to: re: Anymore? - tmdonahue 09:22 pm EST 11/18/14

nm


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re: Anymore?

Posted by: enoch10 09:36 pm EST 11/18/14
In reply to: re: Anymore? - tmdonahue 09:22 pm EST 11/18/14

that data makes sense to me even without knowing when the study was done. i suspect it was always like that even when newspapers played a much bigger part in people's lives.

i guess the one thing i would question about the data is how much reviews influence world of mouth.

i think the difference a review could make- if it can make one at all - is in the rave. a real one and they're really, really rare. i'm not surprised that a favorable review wouldn't make much difference.

i don't suppose any data was collected on shows that came in with bad reviews from the times during the out of town run? i realize that's mighty specific.


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