2-27-09
Theatres Tightening Belts, but Cautiously Optimistic, Surveys Say
Theatres are not feeling well, but they’re not as sick as the rest of the economy, and the prognosis is good that they will weather through the next season.
Those are the conclusions of two surveys measuring the fiscal health of theatre organizations. The League of Chicago Theatres released its findings from the Chicago Theatre Fiscal Health Survey earlier this month, while the Theatre Communications Group last week released its quarterly Taking Your Fiscal Pulse survey. The findings are in many ways similar: ticket sales are generally holding steady, while institutional support either has or is expected to decline, generally in the range of 20 percent.
The League survey asked theatres about the rest of this year, as well as expectations for next. The TCG survey largely focused on this year. Budget sizes also differed between surveys. Of the 66 theatres surveyed by the League, 23 have budgets under $75,000, representing 34 percent of the group. In fact, 54 percent of the League’s member theatres have budgets under $250,000, and only three have budgets above $5 million.
TCG’s theatres are decidedly richer. Their lowest budget group runs from $50,000 to $499,999—representing only 17 percent of respondents. Most of their respondents (29 percent) have budgets in the $1 - $3 million range.
Yet in both surveys, roughly 50 percent of respondents said their ticket sales this year (or, in the case of TCG, last quarter) were steady or increased. While that leaves half the theatres reporting a decrease in tickets sold, League executive director Deb Clapp points out that over 60 percent of Chicago area theatres said their decrease in ticket sales was due more to poor programming than to the economy.
“One theatre said it was all their kids shows that had tanked, but their grown-up shows were doing fine,” said Clapp. “It is subjective, but I think there is some validity of their assessment.”
The theatres that are having the most trouble (in Chicago, anyway) are those with budgets in the $250,000 - $1 million range. Fourteen out of the 20 theatres in this range that replied to the League survey reported a decrease in ticket sales. Five of those theatres reported a decrease of more than 30 percent. And 65 percent of theatres in this range are experiencing a drop in contributed income for this season.
According to Clapp, what puts these mid-size theatres at risk is that they are large enough to have fixed costs, but not large enough to have a cushion.
Most of these theatres have subscribers—who have expectations. Those expectations make it “less easy to adapt your season to changing economic climates,” Clapp said. “When you lose some of your funding, the only place your budget is soft is in your marketing budget. Then you can’t sell tickets, then you’re in a downward spiral.”
In contrast, smaller theatres that are entirely dependent on ticket sales may not have the staff or salaries of the mid-level groups, but they also have the flexibility to change or cancel a show. They’re also not necessarily locked into spaces.
Most of the theatres in both surveys are taking steps to cut their budgets for next season. Sixty percent of the League’s theatres are looking to trim their spending for the 2009/2010 season, most by less than 30 percent. Twenty percent of those are looking to cut staff, while 30 percent are planning to trim programming.
Staff reductions are also the top strategies of the TCG theatres. Forty-eight percent of TCG respondents said they were cutting administrative staff. Sixty-nine percent said they were freezing or reducing salaries. But in a measure of the differences between the two surveys, one of the biggest reduction items for TCG theatres was traveling. Sixty percent of those theatres plan to keep their staffs at home more.
And despite the increased or steady ticket sales, 55 percent of TCG theatres are planning to roll out ticket discounts.