Want to know what really gets my engine going?

1.  Data.

2. When experts from outside of our industry analyze our data.

Ohhhh yeah.  Just typing that gets me all a-tingley.

So imagine how I felt when I heard that Jeffrey Simonoff, a NYU Stern School of Business Statistics Professor (!), had released a study entitled “Broadway Show Survival”, with a headline that screamed, “New Study Shows that a Major Tony Award Lengthens a Show’s Run by Almost 50%”!

Here’s why the article is important to you and me, according to the Prof himself:

“In the Broadway theater business, where attracting the largest possible theater-going audience is critical, theater owners, producers and investors need to understand what goes into a smash hit,” said Simonoff. “This research takes an important step in furthering our understanding of what contributes to both hits and flops in today’s business of Broadway.”

Some of the salient points in the five page study we already knew, like:

• Musicals have an almost 50 percent longer expected run than non-musicals (i.e., comedies or dramas)
• Revivals, despite their tried and true beginnings, tend to be less successful than other shows with a roughly 20 percent shorter expected run than non-revivals

But, then, there are some new nuggets . . . including one of my favorites:

• Higher attendance in the first week after a show opens is a good indicator of the show’s longer-term success

(This one, by the way, ties us closer to the film industry than many of us probably knew – it’s more about the “opening weekend” than we thought.)

So, now you see why an analysis of the characteristics of a hit and a flop gets me more revved up than the characteristics of Kate Upton?

In fact, uh . . . here’s a link to the full study, because I . . . uh . . . I gotta . . . go . . . somewhere.

P.S.  Professor Simonoff and all of your Stats students, if you, you know, need some other ideas on numbers to “crunch”, let me know.  I’ve got a few ideas.

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