On Friday morning I received another email from New York City Opera.

“Dear Shawn, As you may have read by now New York City Opera is on the verge of canceling its season and filing for bankruptcy.  You can read more in The New York Times and AP.” 

 

Both “The New York Times” and “AP” were hotlinked.   The New York Times hotlink linked to a “Page not Found message”, which seems appropriate in light of how poorly NYCO has handled every aspect of this situation.

The AP hotlink DID work however, which in turn allowed me to link a Bloomberg piece on NYCO where I found this wonderful bit of information – 

“In 2011-12, the last year for which results are available, ticket sales were $1.1 million, down 87 percent from 2005-06. Steel’s 2011 compensation, $340,000, while down 10 percent from the previous year, amounted to a third of ticket sales.”

Wow.

Additionally, NYCO’s email reminded me, “We have until Monday to raise the rest of the money we need to save our season and save the Company, which means you have five days left to make a difference to us with a contribution.”  Everybody loves a Countdown I guess.

Then Saturday morning at 12:11am, 15 hours after the first, I received yet another email from NYCO. 

“Dear Shawn, You have probably heard the news that New York City Opera plans to cancel its season and file for bankruptcy if we don’t find the funds to finance our season by Monday.  While we’ve raised $2 million towards our target of $7 million, and our Kickstarter campaign has gained a lot of support in the past 24 hours, it isn’t enough to keep NYC Opera in business.”

Something about the word “find” tickled me.  “If we don’t find the funds to finance our season.”  Like find it under the floor boards or in some box in the back of grandma’s closet or the pocket of some jeans you haven’t worn in awhile or something.

Also, while NYCO hasn’t used the word “save”, the notion of “saving” NYCO and “saving” the season has permeated the NYCO fund drive.  “I Stand By NYCO” is the main catch phrase of the campaign.  Stand by them against some outside evil influence.  Not the obvious internal mismanagement, poor planning and foolishness that is the cause of NYCO’s crisis.

Also something about “probably heard the news” as opposed to the original email’s “may have read by now.”  I would have heard it from the NYT earlier had your hotlink not been dead, jerks.  

As I have said, how did NYCO and Steel not foresee this crisis months ago?  Perhaps before the obviously costly media blitz plastered all of NYC with Anna Nicole images and Sarah Joy Miller’s (albeit very attractive) cleavage. 

To NYCO’s credit this marketing campaign worked.  At least I bought it.  I started strategizing getting tickets last year.  I even put it in my calendar.  But as I mentioned in the other articlenothing went smoothly.  

Message to NYCO and Steel, it undercuts ones message of being cutting edge and the “IT” show of the fall to desperately beg to be saved the week before your big “IT” premiere. 

The Kickstarter campaign is at $227,820 with 62 hours to go.