Business Rule #679:  If your competition does something successfully, do something similar.

It’s not the most original business axiom in the book, (I’d rather be a business leader than a business follower – that’s where the real history and the real profits are made), but in the case I’m about to discuss, I’m happy someone at FOX TV likes to copy off of NBC’s paper.

This past Monday, (timed for all the hub-bub around the Tony noms, no doubt), FOX announced that it would present a live television version of everyone’s favorite musical, Grease, later this year.

Obviously, this is a result of the ginormous success of NBC’s The Sound of Music, and their announcement of Peter Pan for the coming year.

And while I’m sure there are a lot of purists out there lamenting the choice of the immensely popular four-chord-three-joke musical instead of another classic R&H or Lerner and Loewe, etc.

But let’s not look a gift-Broadway-musical-broadcast in the mouth.

With some hopeful casting coups, this live telecast will mean millions more across the country will get Broadway exposure without having to be in the middle of Times Square.  And Grease is a fantastic choice – because when you’re rolling out a product to a wider market, it’s smartest to give them something you know they’ll enjoy, so you can serve up twenty more shows right behind that one for the next twenty years.

I’ve mentioned before how telecasts like this (and hopefully the roll-out of Met-like telecasts of the actual shows in movie theaters around the country) are one of the greatest weapons we have in the war to not only grow our audience, but to keep our audience from being captured by the Netflix of the world.

And now we have two networks as allies.

Ummm, CBS?  ABC (owned by Disney)?  Gonna join the partaaaay?

P.S.  What do you think the odds are that another revival will follow the telecast if it’s a success?

P.S.S.  Will someone ever let me produce Grease 2?  Imagine this song as a Susan Stroman-style production number!

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