Minstrel

From: The Minstrel <mike.agranoff@folkproject.org>

Date: Fri, Oct 27, 2017 at 10:52 AM

Subject: Minstrel Booking Report: November 2017

To: Board FP <fullboard@folkproject.org>

Well, October was a short and unprofitable month. And I attribute the financial loss to my own misjudgement. Rosie and the Riveters had so impressed me at NERFA that I offered them a guarantee that I probably should have known we would not be able to meet on their name recognition. I was hoping to generate enough excitement about them to draw in some of our regulars, and did not succeed. (Much to the loss of those who did not show up as well as to us.) With Getaway and Halloween occupying two Fridays this month, we only presented two shows. Average paid attendance was 66.5 (88.0 total attendance). We lost $324 for the month. (We are still $1,976 in the black year to date.) Average paid attendance for the past 12 months was 79.5 for regular shows, and 62.6 including Open Stages. With the change in structure voted in by the Board at the October meeting, Open Stages will henceforth not be considered as part of the Minstrel's operation, so I will no longer be including attendance and profit figures from Open Stages in the future. And a year from now the distinction between "regular" shows and all shows, will disappear..

With almost a full year under out belts since the increase of the Minstrel admission from $9 to $10 on January 1, it is interesting to note some pertinent figures. The past 12 months, our average paid attendance was 79.5, and we are operating $1,698 in the black. For the previous 12 months, our average paid attendance was 94.6, and we operated $908 in the black. By itself, that looks like we have traded increased profitablilty for lower attendance. Which is not a good long-term tradeoff. But there is another big factor that skews the data that way: The Nov. '15 - Oct. 16 season included 6 really high-draw acts (Christine Lavin, John Gorka, Jay Ungar & Molly Mason, Shockenaw Mountain Boys, Phil Ochs Song Night, and Frank Vignola), while in the past 12 months, I was only able to book one such act (Tom Chapin). I'm workin' on it, folks, but it ain't easy.

With a lot of help from Kathi Caccavale as instigator, and Pat Brangs and Pam Robinson as willing hands, we have moved all of the Folk Project's stuff stored in the basement of MUF to the small room they have provided for us for that purpose. We did some triage and got rid of some useless and duplicate stuff, and separated Minstrel, Getaway, and Archive items in their own areas. I've asked Sound Chair John Mahon if we should sell the big speakers, which we no longer use at the Minstrel, or anywhere else.

Concert Window continues to give us technical difficulties. An issue cropped up where the broadcast stream appears on our screen as a series of still images that update every 5 to 15 seconds or so. But we've determined that this is a problem on our end, and the stream goes out properly as a moving image. So we are ignoring that for the time being. A more thorny problem seems to be with the audio of the webcast. Comments from viewers indicate a poor mix, with some sound sources over-prominent, and others too low in the mix. I'm looking into ways of adjusting that on the fly. But I'm not happy about that, as it makes for more work for the sound tech. Or perhaps it would require an additional tech, which I really don't want. One of my goals when incorporating the webcasts into our operation was that it not affect our volunteer load. We'll see what we can figure out.

A very interesting thing happened with Concert Window for the Cindy Mangsen / Steve Gillette show on October 20. While our usual fare is maybe a dozen viewers, yielding $10 - $20 in CW revenue, Cindy & Steve drew 22 ticket purchasers and 27 subscribers for a total of $127 in CW earnings. I asked them what they did to draw such viewership, and Cindy sent me a copy of a separate email blast to their list. (They credited the complete and clear information on our website on making it easier for patrons to tune in.) I will be sending out an edited copy of that mailing to our upcoming acts as an example of how to publicize the broadcast to their distanat fans.

New bookings since last month:

• December 29: George Wurzbach (the keyboard player from Modern Man) opening for Bob Malone

• January 26: Christine Lavin

• June 1: Toby Walker

• September 28: Beppe Gambetta

(I'm workin' on them high-draw bookings, folks.)

Highlights for November

• November 17: Joe Jencks (from Brother Sun)

• November 24 Lords of Liechtenstein (These kids are starting to generate some buzz. I'll be real curious to see what kind of crowd they draw on Thanksgiving Friday.)

Respectfully submitted

Mike Agranoff

Program Chair

The Minstrel Acoustic Concert Series

Morristown, NJ. USA