This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser from Bloomberg Radio. Our next guest that we last checked in with her back in July, Paul, and this was on the heels of the news that there would be no Broadway theater this year. We got an update on that last week, no lights along the Great White Way until at least June of one. Let's get into it with Charlotte st. Martin. She's president of the Broadway League. She joins us once again on the phone in New York City. Charlotte, So
glad to have you back with us. How are you well hanging in there? This is certainly not great news for all of the fantastic people that work on Broadway, but we're in the same situation as most everyone else these days. Yeah, my, I gotta say, my heart kind of broke when I saw that headline and we reported it last week, thinking, you know, I think we're all hoping just to hope, you know, just trying to get back to some sense of normalcy, but especially when it
comes to you know, entertainment or live theater. Um, how did you guys kind of come up with the latest projection? Thinking June is this just all around a vaccine, you or what's the thinking behind it. Well, it's around all of the things relating to the protocols, uh, the fact that there hasn't been uh a verified rapid test that is secure, which we have to have for the cast and crew until the virus is gone. And that doesn't even address the audience, which we also have to get
the right products for the audience. And with no news about that now, we just felt that we had to be as open and transparent as possible with the people that work for Broadway, work on Broadway, and our theater goers. So many of those nine thousand employees that depend on Broadway to work need to have as much advanced notice now as possible so that they can try to find other work. Since the extension is so far out, Charlotte, what do we know about the economic impact to date
on those employees on the theater owners? I think about these beautiful theaters in Midtown Manhattan on the West Side, just sitting idle. Talk to us about some of the economic impacts you're hearing about. Well, for our last full season, the loss in ticket sales was almost two billion dollars and the loss to the city of New York was
almost fifteen billion dollars. It's, uh, everyone loses with this, and it's hard when you're talking billions to put a face to it, but in fact, you know, the face has ninety seven thousand faces that are unable to collect a paycheck. And you know, most of the organizations I know have reduced their staff as much as they can so that they can reopen when we have the opportunity to reopen. So it's it's not good news anyway you
look at it. I know I was thinking about and I guess I was reading something too, you know, just I mean, if you think about people who go to theater, I mean they're all ages, but there's a lot of older theater goers, you know, lack of tours that are coming into the country now, and then you've got old theaters where the idea of trying to do social distancing it's just you can't do it, you guys have It's just really difficult on so many different angles. That's absolutely right.
And while you know the average age of our audience is forty two point three, I think there's still certainly a large percentage over that age and a large percentage under that age. And these are hundred year old grandams in many cases our theaters. And you know, as someone said to me, have you ever watched a one minute costume change with three people making that change in the in the space the size of a phone booth? So you know that social distancing just does at work, Charlotte.
Are there any parts of the world where live theater has come back? I'm thinking about you know, London or other Paris or other major markets where it's come back. Or is this kind of a universal thing? Now? This is universal? You have Korea is the only location that
I'm aware of that has reopened without social distancing. And it's a brand new theater with giant lobbies and giant stages and big spaces, and uh, they have a culture of wearing masks and and behave much better than a lot of our lovely Americans who can't seem to put those masks on. So UM, for the most part, you have a few venues that are trying social distancing, and
it's just you can't financially make it work. In New York City, we have seventeen union contracts that UM require our theaters to be over nine full just to return on investment for the people who make theater, and if we don't return, we don't get theater. So uh, it's it's still we have not found a solution to socially distanced in a safe way. Did you say they have
to be ninety full? No, I said ninety Okay, yeah, no, because I remember us talking in the past, and it was this whole idea of you know, could you do something virtual or could you do something partial? But it's just the mathematics just don't exist, Charlotte. They don't, and we wish it did. But you know, everybody, the besides the people working, I mean the creatives, the theater owners, the producers, everything, the model would have to change, and I think we're not ready to do that just yet,
because we certainly haven't. And when you talk to you know, when you talk to theatergoers, part of what the joy of going to theater is the shared emotion that people have when they're sitting next to people and laughing and crying, and you pick up the energy. And even the casts say they pick up their energy from the audience. How are those workers doing, um, Charlotte, I mean, it's such a big ecosystem. It's certainly the people we see on stage,
but there's so many people behind it. There's so much support, people who build sets. Um, what are those working workers doing at this point? Well, many of them are not able to do anything because there's so few jobs available out there. Some have gone back home if home isn't New York, and you know, are working in different communities,
and uh, some are not working at all. I think many were aided with the extended Unemployment Insurance and the Enhanced Employment Insurance, but of course that's uh not assured any longer. So it's you know, it's really tragic for everyone. I mean they have rent and food to put on the table, and health insurance and all of those things are at risk. Charlotte talk to us about the economics of staging at Broadway production. How is it typically done,
how's the money raised, where does it come from? And is that whole process? Is that going to change now? Well, I suspect there will be a lot of changes as we move forward, but uh, there's not a set way it happens. There are some producers who get a couple of other producers and they financed the whole show. Many do it with many producers I mean, when you see a playbill and you see all that fine print above the title, all of those are the primary investors in
the show. And with an average cost of fifteen to eight million dollars for a musical these days and three to five million dollars for a play, it takes a lot of people to uh to get a Broadway show up, and it often takes five to seven or eight years to get that show up. So they're you know, investing for all of that time and working in the hopes
of getting a hit. So what is it? I mean, I don't know forgive me for doing this, but I just do you have any like thoughts about what it does look like when we finally get back to normal. Is it that you bring back, you know, a show slowly to see how it goes or or or is it too early to even think about that. Well, no,
we're certainly talking about those things. First of all, there were over thirty five shows playing or about to play when we had to shut down on March twelve, and there's no way we could open thirty five shows all at once, if for no other reason, in that there will be extensive re rehearsals for all of those shows plus the new shows, and you know, many of them share the same director or the choreographer, are set designers. So I mean, we hope that will have enough of
critical mass to open and have some excitement. But I think you could look at a period of a month to six weeks as shows come on board. At least that's what we're hoping. I mean, I wish I had a giant crystal ball that was accurate, but I don't, Charlotte. So it's kind of your working assumption within the community that Broadway really doesn't have the opportunity to come back until there really is a widely available vaccine. We're not saying that because if we said that, we might not
come back from even longer. We're saying until the scientists and the medical uh products that are brought out are ready. For example, if we have rapid testing for the casting crew, we could do that. I mean, you just saw the n b A who had almost no cases because they did it in there, you know, in a bubble, so to speak. Um, rapid testing is what we think it
will take for the cast and crew. There are many products being tested that have um, what I would call cautiously optimistic promises that it will help make the auditorium safe. And then and then you have the advent of a lot of contact list services and products, whether it's you know, how we change the ingress and regress to the theater, contactless faucets and toilets, UH, play bills that are online,
things like that. I mean, every single touch point is being analyzed by the forty two task forces working on various aspects of of getting back safely. So there's you know, there's much we still don't know yet, because just when we think we have good information, you learn new information. And sometimes it feels like you're going three steps spoward and two steps back. But at least we since that
we're moving forward at this point. Yeah, the whole idea of touch points, um, I mean, are there's things like playbills online probably going to stay around forever? Is it just just to kind of get your way back potentially? I have no idea what will happen. I will say I know people collect their playbills, and I know people that have forty years of playbills, fifty years of playbills because it's it's part of their heart and part of
their being. I can't imagine playbill going away. Maybe we will have to have uh the virtually for a while. I mean, there's the thought that you have the vendor puts the playbills down, let the theater go or pick it up. But then, as you've know, when you go to the theater, if there's a substitution, they have two stuff the playbills with whose substitute? And you know that requires manual labor. So there's just so many things that are still up in the air, and we're looking at
it all. Yeah, all right, well, listen, we wish you well, and we wish you know, we hope that things start to get back to normal sooner rather than maybe that June date. Um, so our fingers across. Charlotte sat Martin, she's president of the Broadway League. On the phone in New York City,