If you’re a golfer, the Golf Channel becomes your favorite television show.  That’s right.  The whole dang network.  It’s like someone asking, “What’s your favorite show?” and instead of answering, “American Idol,” or “Dance Moms,” you answer, “NBC.”

If you watch the Golf Channel enough, you’ll realize something.  At least 60% of the programming is about professional golf.  And the remaining 40%?

It’s about teaching you to play better golf.

And one of the biggest tag lines you’ll hear from one of the Golf Channel’s official apps?

“Go.  Play.”

The Golf Channel, and the Golf Industry (which has taken a big hit in “attendance” over the past few years – sound familiar?) has realized that there is one key to the future of the sport.  Participation.

During the Super Bowl, did you hear announcers encouraging you to get out and play a game of touch football with your friends?  Or did you get instruction on how to throw a perfect spiral?  Do you get free throw instruction while watching a Knicks game?  (Actually, the Knicks are the ones that should get the instruction!)  or suggestions on how to get a good pick up game going?

But golf’s a different story.

And so is the theater.

It is proven that participation in the arts (especially at a young age) leads to consumption of the arts.  So, the best audience development programs we can build today shouldn’t just be focused on bringing kids to the theater.  It should be focused on getting kids to . . . well . . . go . . . “play.”

If I were holding Broadway’s marketing purse strings, I’d put a bunch of the budget behind a program to get people to join their local community theaters.  I’d hold more and more instructional programs for kids and adults alike, teaching them how to be better actors, better singers, better dancers (all those things create happier audiences, by the by, and happier audiences want to see more theater).

Our future audiences are on elementary school stages, and high school stages and community theater stages all over the country.

Put more people up there, and we’ll have more people in our audiences twenty years from now.

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