When I first moved to New York back in the pre-cell phone era, one of the coolest things to do was to go see David Letterman live up at 30 Rockefeller Plaza (remember when he was at NBC?).

In order to get tickets to see the tall, gap-toothed, funny man, you had two options:

– Send in a postcard to the studios and wait 3-4 months for a reply, hoping that you’d be lucky enough to get a ticket to a show (and then hoping you’d be in town the day they invited you to come).

– Get up at the crack-butt of dawn and wait outside 30 Rock, and then wait inside 30 Rock, for a limited number of standby tickets that they’d fill if . . . if . . they had avail.

I did both.

The postcard tickets never came through.

And it took me three standby attempts before I got a single ticket so way far in the back of the studio that I ended up watching the monitors the whole time and I might as well have been at home.

Flash forward 20-odd years later (I’m doing that Wayne’s World “doodle-do-doodle-do-doodle-do” thing with my hands right now). . .

If you’ve walked through midtown lately and looked past the Elmos, past the Scientology lady and past naked Cowboy/Cowgirl/Indian . . . you may have spotted The Letterman Ladies, as I call them.  They’re easily identifiable with their “Late Show” jackets, clipboards, and the following bark:  “Free David Letterman Tickets!  Free tickets to The Late Show With David Letterman!”

They’re out there everyday.  How do I know that?  I asked them.  Yep, I put on my best tourist disguise, pretended I was interested in those tickets, and asked them a ton of questions.  What did I find out?

Well, it turns out they have plenty o’ tickets to give away for each and every show.  And they are sent out from their mother ship at the Ed Sullivan Theater every single day to make sure Dave has a full house to make sardonic comments to.

That’s a heck of a difference from the early 90’s.

What happened?

Why sure, The Ed Sullivan has more seats than the old NBC studio.  But still.  Why is one of the previously most sought after tickets in the city now hawked on the street like . . . well . . . Scientology?

Things have changed in this city.  There are a zillion more entertainment options than there used to be, including a bunch of television shows.  More options means most of those options have more availability.

So Letterman has to get more aggressive.

And so do Broadway shows.

Need some specifics to understand why?

Last week there were 27 shows on Broadway.

20 years ago, in 1994, during the same calendar week, there were 19.  That’s an increase of 42%.   Since the average Broadway theater has a capacity of 1242.67 seats, that means there were 9,941.36 more seats to fill last week than 20 years prior!

So yeah, you can see why we’re on the street  too . . .

But here’s the rub . . . Letterman is free.  And if you don’t think The Letterman Ladies have picked up a few potential Broadway Ticket Buyers by offering their free chance to see a celeb, well, then, I’ve got a bridge to smack you in the face with.

Broadway’s competition, like Letterman’s, is bigger and broader than ever before.  We battle other Broadway shows, but that’s only where it begins.  We grapple over buyers with museums, theme restaurants . . . or simply sitting on the red steps and staring at the Naked Cowboy/Cowgirl/Indian.

So when you design your next Broadway marketing campaign, remember David Letterman wants your customers too.  And since we can never make our ticket prices free, we have to do something even more radical:  make our shows great.

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