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Phew. Sometimes you actually make the right decision.

Last year, we developed a show around the popular kids music brand "Kidz Bop", then tested the show in a few mid-size cities like Albany, NY in 1000 to 2000 seat theatres. The sales were disappointing – we thought we’d get to a 2nd show in each city, but couldn’t even sell out one – but anticipated a performing arts center tour, organically building the show in to larger theatres.

The rights holders decided they wanted a larger scale production; we disagreed, not understanding how the ticket sales warranted that. Eventually we walked away, having lost a truckload o’ cash, and family entertainment giant, Vee Corp, stepped in.

They’ve gone in to arenas, and the tour starts next week. Jared and I checked out the sales on Ticketmaster today (sadly, as if stalking an ex-girlfriend on a date). Thankfully, tickets were still available in the front ten rows for the first shows. As Micheal Eisner remarked (back in his glory days), the shows you chose not to do are as important as the shows you chose to do.

 Funnily enough, they’ve continued with the show concept we created. And the promo video also comes from our production. Click on World Tour Video Promo to check out our first ever show, back in York, PA.

One of my first bosses used to say that the only sin in showbiz is the sin of scale. In other words, practically any show will work if the venue is the right size.

Jared and I were just talking about an idea he’s working on: creating a show around a comic pop-culture star. The question is, what scale should it be? Do you create a theatrical show for Broadway, a limted run harnessing the Broadway marketing machine? Or Off Broadway, without the glam but with reduced expectations and the excitement of seeing a star up close? Or a rock style tour, playing one nighters in 3000 seaters?

If you go too big, you can’t shrink. If you go small and it’s a hit, you can move to a bigger theatre — but you may also miss the critical mass of marketing dollars and word of mouth that could make the show work.

One option, often derided, is market research. We recently tested an idea to create a live show around a certain VH1 star, whose dating show was a phenomena, years after his rap group had been famous. The numbers were incredibly low, despite enormous awareness, so the research probably saved us six months of hard work and a lot of money.

Congratulations, Ross, Vallejo, Sally, Megan, Amanda and all at Spiegelworld. Their New York season finished tonight, and I finally saw Absinthe last night — it was sensational. The entire Spiegel experience – restaurant, night club, bar and shows – were a huge leap forward from last year. It’s a huge triumph that they’ve made it a New York summer fixture in only it’s second year.

To quote Kevin McCollum, "theatre is research and development…your goal is to enter the marketplace with the least amount of cost and test the market to see if anyone likes what you’ve created". We closed "The J.A.P. Show" tonight because the punters didn’t like what we created – well, actually, the ones who came seemed to really like it, but they didn’t like it enough to drag their friends back.

 It’s not surprising when a new show closes. In any field, the research process is going to throw up more honorable failures than successes. And it’s a pretty random process: rarely are either the hits or misses predictable.

 Big success depends on that rare, but hugely rewarding, random win. The problem is, each entry in the lottery is hard. If you followed the advice of The Black Swan, my oft cited favorite book de jour, you might make small gambles on supposedly impossible events in the financial markets – say, the Euro going to $2 or Google stocks crashing – and only lose your investment when it doesn’t pay off, which is most of the time. But producing a show – and esp. a low budget show – requires huge personal effort and energy and emotion. Even a small show like this one, capitalized at under $200,000, takes a big personal investment, so its hard for everyone when they close.

Crikey! Duran Duran will play Broadway for two weeks in November. They’ll be playing the Barrymore, which would have housed Kiki and Herb if the Helen Hayes hadn’t come through at the last minute.

Frankly I think this is a brilliant idea. A two week run allows them to amortize the high load in cost – the premium that gets you on to Broadway – and Duran Duran’s audience is probably the same as the Broadway audience in general.

Playbill report on Duran Duran coming to Broadway

I was invited to see "Million Dollar Quartet", the true story / recreation of a 1956 night when Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis jammed, impromptu and all night long, at Sun Studios. Just saw this very stong Talkin Broadway review  , which confirms that I need to see this show, which is playing at the Village Theatre in Seattle.

I recently mentioned Time Out leaking word of our Kiki and Herb Xmas show. And it was a genuine leak – only today did we have our first full marketing meeting.

 It’s an interesting marketing challenge. Our last KIki and Herb Carnegie show sold out two weeks in advance. But that show was billed as their LAST ever show, generating huge interest. (Of course, rumors of their death turned out to be exaggerated, and we went on to produce their Broadway show…and get robbed at the Tonys…nuf said).

We can’t call this a "final" show, but we still have some marketing hooks: K&H Xmas shows are an institution in their own right; the Broadway show broadened their appeal; and the last Carnegie show was incredible. But we’re going on sale before the Xmas

spirit kicks in; and once it does, right after Thanksgiving, we’ll only have two and a half weeks till the Dec 12 show.

We’re pushing for a sell out. Let’s see how we go.

I hear that "Celia The Musical", the Spanish language musical about to open at New World Stages, is doing great business. In other words, Off Broadway works when you produce something people want to see.

The conventional wisdom says Off Broadway is dead. But perhaps that’s what happens when you produce shows people don’t want to see. Of course, it’s easier for producers to blame Off Broadway than accept that their shows aren’t working. To reference Black Swan yet again (my new fave book), this is the narrative  fallacy at work – we have to find a story to explain randomness.

As reported moments ago in Playbill,  Love Gone Wrong has cancelled its November run. Time to call the Shuberts! We’ve been hitting a traffic jam, unable to get Snowshow on Broadway for a holiday run. Perhaps this will be our opportunity…