What’s New Wednesday?

Our biz is the circle of life

Live event promoter Don Law along with David Mugar, producer of the Fourth of July Pops Event has purchased the Boston Opera House, Orpheum Theatre, and the Paradise from Live Nation.  The reported price is $22.5 million.  See today’s Boston Globe article. The new business will be called Boston Opera Ventures, LLC.  For Don Law this has come full circle.  He once owned the Paradise and managed the Orpheum.  Don also currently runs the New England region for Live Nation.

One giant radio format?

In the May 4th issue of Country Aircheck  there is an article about Clear Channel Radio creating a new “premium choice” format for their country stations.  What this means is that all CC country radio stations throughout the U.S. can play the same music at the same time.  Kind of like satellite radio?  If you are a smaller artist, this could suck for you.  Local country radio stations have been vital to artists throughout the history of country music.  Most of today’s top artists credit local country radio for getting them where they are today.  If Clear Channel controls all the music for their stations, how is a newer artist supposed to get heard?  For all of us in event & entertainment marketing the question is how does this new format affect the way we market on country stations? If you are a promoter of a national tour, this might work for you.  If they run the same music can they do a national promotion? The article does mention that local stations can slightly change content to fit in local commercial time.

Tweaking online ads

There is an article in today’s Wall Street Journal about online display ads becoming more appealing to marketers.  The article mentions the company VideoEgg.  They have developed an ad format where not only can it help find the right website to display the ad but the advertiser only pays when a consumer engages.  When a consumer clicks on or hovers the mouse over an ad, a larger version or video ad pops up.  When this happens, the advertiser will then pay for the ad.  They are on to something.  The biggest ongoing online advertising question has been “how do I know anyone is seeing my ad”?  This should help answer the question.  The one issue that marketers do have with this format is how do we budget for it?  They need to come up with a minimum and maximum rate plan.

Tags: Boston Opera House, Boston Opera Ventures, Clear Channel Radio, Country Aircheck, David Mugar, Don Law, Fouth of July Pops Concert, Live Nation, LLC., national music format, online advertising, Orpheum Theatre, pay only when consumer engages, premium choice format, The Paradise, VideoEgg