A few notes about the Arizona Republic
Q: Who’s writing the paper’s Arizona Living section?
A: Not Republic reporters. Two days into the week, a total of nine feature stories. One was written by a Republic staffer. The rest were all wire stories, and lame ones at that. (“Facebook buds make workouts a bit easier.”)
On Sunday, there was a big page of things to do this week. Top item: John Mayer doing a VH1 Storytellers show. (I can’t link to it because it doesn’t sem to appear on the web.) It’s hard to be optimistic about the future of the paper when it seems like virtually no one working at the place cares about the substance of what they are publishing. A city the size of Phoenix and the best thing they can suggest doing over the course of the week is sitting on your butt and watching a routine basic cable show?
Our favorite story this week, however, was a strong Richard Ruelas feature Saturday about the frontier-day newspaper wars between the Republic and the Phoenix Gazette.
In a history of the Republic Ruelas noticed a funny story, dating from 1912, about how the Gazette was caught stealing news from the Republic, then called the Republican, which planted a fake story that the Gazette duly lifted. Wrote the Republic:
Lacking the enterprise which it boastfully claims and being utterly devoid of the commonest ethics belonging to the newspaper business, [the Gazette] has been brazenly and methodically stealing the news which The Republican has paid to have gathered and to publish.
Ruelas is one of the few people at the paper who does actual reported features. A week or so ago he did a long and fairly interesting reconstruction of an ineresting bit of rock ‘n’ roll arcana: Was Bono targeted for a shooting at a Tempe show back in 1987?
The year Arizona was consumed with controversy over Gov. Evan Mecham’s decision to cancel a state holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. was also the year that the Irish band U2 played four concerts here.
And dealt with death threats, according to the band. According to the oft-told tale, lead singer Bono would be shot while performing the group’s ode to King, “Pride (In the Name of Love).”
The band’s memory of this 1987 incident has appeared in various books, in magazines and in Bono’s induction speech when the band entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Ruelas skeptically pieces together various recollections to figure out how much of the story was true.
2:55 PM
The traffic after the U2 concert
According to the Republic, the multiple traffic jams had a simple cause:
Traffic from fans flocking to a concert headlined by [U2] caused significant delays on Interstate 10 and Loop 101.
Glendale Police Chief Steve Conrad said large delays arose when many concertgoers “descended on the stadium all at once.”
Unlike NFL fans, who arrive hours before Cardinals games begin, many attending Tuesday’s event tried to arrive shortly before the 6 p.m. show began, Conrad said.
It’s good the paper took the time to take note of the backup, which PHXated can testify was immense. But its analysis was flawed.
For the first, if you sell 60,000 or 70,000 tickets to a live event that starts at a certain time, it’s not really cricket to complain that people come to see the show.
“Oh my gosh—where did all these people come from?”
It’s the presenter’s job to have the capacity to adequately park the patrons that show up for their event.
Secondly, the powers that be at the stadium disallowed tailgating before the show. Wouldn’t having allowed tailgating brought more fans to the stadium early?
But finally, the real cause of the delays, from PHXated’s perspective, was simple. (I speak as someone with many years as a working rock critic and so can claim a little bit of expertise in assessing the functioning, or lack thereof, Tuesday night.)
As far as I could see, all of the folks approaching the stadium from the north and from Glendale Avenue, east and west, were being routed into two single-file lines. Those lines were then forced to snake through various parts of the parking lot, expanding to two lanes and then back to one lane along the way, before making a last series of bizarre meanderings before being directed where to park.
In literally decades of concert-going, encompassing literally hundreds of large-scale shows, I have never seen such an incompetent process. The idea that a pool of concert-goers that might have comprised some quarter of the people approaching the site at any given time were being snaked into a single-file line is beyond comprehension.
Hard to see how the cause wasn’t penny-pinching on the promoter’s part.
Incidentally, I was chatting with someone this a.m. about the economics of the tour. She told me she’d heard that U2’s stage setup was so expensive that they weren’t making any money on the tour.
It was a potent example of the misinformation the music industry puts out about its workings. Let’s do some math.
The stadium holds about 65,000. The Republic said 56,000 attended the show. I think that was low; to me the upper decks looked largely filled; even if you factor in seats lost behind the stage, there was still an immense pool of fans, at least 10,000 strong, on the field. There’s no way only 45,000 people were sitting on the sides.
But let’s split the difference and say just 65,000 attended.
Tickets ranged from $225 to $55; I’m going to hazard an average price of $125.
That’s a plausible gross of about $8 million. And that doesn’t count merchandise (which the venue splits with the band) and concessions (which it typically doesn’t). Our two BBQ sandwiches and a couple of drinks cost more than $30. Those two elements together brought the take of the show within spitting distance of $10 million.
And don’t get me started on the Ticketmaster fees, a large chunk of which get routed back to the band and promoter. That puts the take close to $11 million.
The idea that oceans of money was not being made on the show is highly amusing.
The bottom line: The promoters could have shelled out for some better parking planning. And next time they shouldn’t be surprised when tens of thousands of fans show up to a rock show they sold the tickets to.
9:38 PM