Telecharge.com recently sent out an email to its customers with a subject similar to the subject of this blog.

Why?

Because this summer, a bunch of shows are shaking up their schedules.

• Baby It’s You has performances on Friday at 2 PM.
• Chicago has performances on Thursday at 3 PM.
• Rock of Ages has performances on Friday at 3 PM.
• Mamma Mia has a couple of Friday performances at 2 PM.
• (Book of Mormon had some Friday mats scheduled at one point, but has since reverted to a standard sched.)

So what’s with this new strategy?  Well, it’s the summer, so more tourists are roaming the streets of Times Square, and these shows are trying to go around their competition.  While the shows may not sell out at these “odd” times,” the theory is that there are people that want to see shows at alternative times.  And while there may be 30+ shows competing for an audience on a Friday night, there may less than a handful competing for that audience on a Friday mat.  And a show just might net higher than on a Tuesday or Wednesday night.

London has always offered earlier Friday performances, and I’ve been pitching a summer “Friday at 5” schedule for years.

Most of these shows will snap back to their regular schedule when September comes, and by then we’ll have some data on whether the experiment worked.

I’ll try to do some digging to see if I can get a source from one of these shows to share.

Whether or not they work, big kudos to the decision makers on these shows for giving it a shot.  It takes a lot to deviate from the norm, especially in this change-resistant industry.

But exploration like this is how we discover new ways of solving age-old problems.

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– 87 Days to Godspell!  Read the day-by-day account of producing Godspell on Broadway here.

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