Monday, March 9, 2015

Pimps and Whores

It's been a while since Rudy and Mickey chased the pimps and whores out of Times Square.

                  
      


They helped make Times Square what it is today, for better or for worse. Nowadays, it's just pedestrian malls, chain stores, and lots and lots of people jammed into the "Crossroads of the World".

There's no more of this,


                                                                                                          to be seen at all in Times Square. 

While the streets in the theater district have been cleansed, the cyber streets of Broadway are full of much pimping and whoring. Those wayward gals of ill repute, TDF, Playbill.com, and BroadwayWorld.com are peddling their stuff all over the internet. 

TDF continues to place unlabeled advertorials on both Playbill.com and Broadwayworld.com where they advertise their low discounts for specific shows, to the detriment of those shows. They are undercutting the shows own marketing plans by competing with these Broadway shows on price. This practice slowly but surely leeches cash from shows that they target for sales, and the shows they ignore lose out, as the unlabeled advertorials divert potential customers away from them. 

The shows that sell through TDF's TKTS discount booths had been treated fairly without this kind of blatant bias in the past, but apparently, that's all over now. While the ticket sellers hew to this fair and honest policy, the corporate structure, so common today, forswears the moral path and has chosen to seek to become "ticket pimps" (tm!).

In spite of selling discount tickets to every Broadway show that avails itself of TKTS's discount booths, there is this new policy of advertising for customers at the expense of potential full price purchasers, or other higher discounts than TKTS offers. This does not help shows to maximize their revenue, it just attempts to divert people to the TKTS discount booth instead of each individual theater. This ensures that TKTS will continue to collect its per ticket fees, but that's not why TKTS was brought into existence to do.

The function of TKTS was envisioned to be a central location to sell same day discount tickets to Broadway shows. Over the years, TKTS and its corporate parent TDF has expanded like a hydra, expanding into education and other areas. It sounds like a nice story, but now, the cult of growth has taken firm hold of TDF, and it has grown to become a key source of revenue for Broadway shows, so much so that we now have a case of the tail wagging the dog. Broadway shows now exist to serve TDF!

In its endless attempt to fill its gaping maw, it's now not good enough to simply sell unsold tickets to shows. It wants/needs to increase its sales to support a bloated corporate structure and if Broadway shows revenue suffers in this pursuit, so be it. 

That has led us to where we are now, with Playbill.com and Broadwayworld.com hosting paid advertorials placed by TDF seeking to increase its sales at the expense of shows that are stuck with no viable alternative to TKTS. TDF is,whether the producers of Broadway shows realize it not, their Daddy. And if they get out of line at some point what might the penalty be? Well, if we watch who is included in these advertorials, and who isn't, we can easily see who will, or could, be slapped down.

Even Playbill.com and Broadwayworld.com are making out here as well, even if it means giving the old screwjob to Broadway shows that pay to participate in the offers each promotes. How can you collect this cash, and then take money from TDF to promote larger discounts? Maybe it's just business, but they are really just giving the shows that pay them the business. 

Well, Rudy is gone now, way gone, and Mickey rarely needs to deal with TDF. But the rest of the denizens of Times Square now have no real choice but to squeal when TDF decides to encroach on business that is not properly theirs, "Thank you, Daddy, may I have another?"

Tain't right. 


                   

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