Playbill
| Playbill | |
|---|---|
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| description | Trade magazine, general interest magazine |
| Area of Expertise | Theater (Broadway, Off-Broadway, US tours, London / West End) |
| language | English |
| publishing company | TotalTheater ( American Theater Press , USA ) |
| Headquarters | New York City |
| First edition | 1884; again in 1982 |
| Frequency of publication | per month |
| Sold edition | 4,073,680 (as of 2012) copies |
| Editors-in-chief | Mark Peikert, previously Blake Ross |
| editor | Philip S. Birsh |
| Web link | www.playbill.com |
| ISSN (print) | 0032-146X |
Playbill is a monthly American magazine for theater goers and professionals. Although the magazine can be subscribed to and in this case is delivered to the customer's home, most of the issues are sold on site in the country's theaters. A large part of the printed editions therefore differs from theater to theater, because in this case the Playbill Magazine also serves as a program booklet for the respective performance and is handed out to the audience at the entrance.
format
Each issue contains articles about actors, new plays, musicals and special tourist attractions. This comprehensive general section can be found in every version of the monthly Playbill ; H. regardless of the type or location of sale.
As a supplement, a booklet is inserted into each of the copies sold in theaters, which contains all the characteristic contents of a program booklet: biographies of actors, authors, directors, composers and production crew as well as a summary of the scenes, descriptions of the set, photos of the performance Musicals also includes a list of the songs performed and their singers / instrumentalists / songwriters. It also contains information relevant to the audience about the length and number of breaks in the play, as well as a section entitled “At this Theater”, which provides information on the architecture of the theater building and its performance history. Each Playbill output that will be issued to the premiere of a new play on Broadway, carries on its cover a seal with the inscription Opening Night ( opening night ) and the corresponding date appears on page 1 of the magazine.
Instead of specific information on individual plays, subscribers to the magazine receive an overview of current Broadway and Off-Broadway productions as well as news from the West End and from North American touring ensembles in their version of Playbill .
The Playbill logo has always featured black text on a yellow background. Since 2014, the banner has been changing from its yellow background to the colors of the rainbow flag every June on the occasion of LGBT * Pride Month . Apart from this innovation, the Playbill only changed the background color of its banner on three occasions in its history:
- October 2008 - Green for Wicked's fifth anniversary
- October 2011 - Royal blue for the tenth anniversary of Mamma Mia!
- October 2013 - Green for Wicked's tenth anniversary
Release history
The first edition of the Playbill was printed in 1884 for a single theater on 21st Street in New York City . Today the magazine can be found in virtually every Broadway theater, as well as a variety of off-Broadway productions and regional theaters across the country. With a constant circulation of over four million copies (4,073,680 in 2012), it is one of the most widespread theater magazines ever.
Since January 1994, the magazine has also had a free online presence. Here, too, the focus is on the major New York Broadway theaters. Like the print medium, the site is aimed at both professionals and theater-goers (or interested laypeople ) and is continuously updated. For the now international audience, in addition to its three sub-areas Broadway , Off-Broadway and Regional / Tours , the Playbill also added a separate, detailed area for the European theater stronghold of the West End under the tab name London in its online offer.
In addition to announcements and reviews of individual productions, the company also offers reduced ticket sales and an extended evening program with an integrated dinner for its members / subscribers on its website. Customers can also book theater-related package tours via the subsidiary PlaybillTravel.com. With PlaybillEDU.com it offers tips and contacts for students, parents and teachers regarding training and career opportunities at the theater as well as its own search engine for suitable schools and universities in the country. In 2000, Playbill added the PlaybillStore, an online shop that sells a large number of merchandise items from most of the current Broadway and touring productions, as well as Playbill itself.
In 2006 the first studio recordings appeared on Playbill Records , a label of the music production company SonyBMG . On this label, for example, Brian Stokes Mitchell's album of the same name and two musical compilations with the titles Scene Stealers, The Men and Scene Stealers, The Women appeared .
Playbill Radio , an all-day-time broadcast Internet radio station (news, podcasts , music library with over 20,000 tracks), premiered in 2007.
The 2011 founded Playbill Vault ( German cellar vault , crypt or vault ) is a comprehensive online database on the history of Broadway. Playbill Vault contains recordings of Broadway productions since 1930. These records include original and current cast lists, headshots of the actors, credits from all contributors, related covers and articles from the Playbill , scans of the Who's Who pages of the Playbill, and photos and videos from the Staging.
Playbill launched its first app “Playbill Passport” on January 4th, 2016.
Competition with stage bill
For decades, the Playbill focused on New York Broadway and Off-Broadway theaters, while the similarly structured magazine Stagebill focused on concerts, operas and dance (especially ballet) in houses such as Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall . In the late 1990s, the Playbill made enormous profits due to the steadily increasing popularity of the (musical) theater, while Stagebill made larger annual losses, in 1998 already in the millions. In order to stabilize income, Stagebill also invaded the previously clearly defined area of Playbill . The coexistence of the competing magazines, known as the “ armistice ”, was first broken in 1995 when the artist association The Public Theater , which had won 54 Tony Awards and five Pulitzer prizes , defected to Stagebill ; However, the duel did not receive much media attention until 1997, when Disney signed not Playbill but Stagebill for their musical The Lion King in the newly reopened New Amsterdam Theater . The main point of contention in the Disney case was control over advertising content: Playbill offers its theaters its services free of charge and receives its income exclusively from advertising, while Disney's corporate policy states that its brochures and programs must not contain any cigarette or alcohol advertisements, which excludes important sponsors.
In response to Stagebill's intrusion into their area of expertise, Playbill began production of Showbill , a sister publication with a similar look , but which fully complied with Disney's advertising regulations and other corporate principles. Disney took advantage of the offered alternative and switched from Stagebill to Showbill during the final weeks of the Lion King's performance in the New Amsterdam Theater . When the musical then moved to the Minskoff Theater , which does not belong to Disney, the company had to make do with Playbill , the same applies to Disney productions in other theaters. The Ford Center for the Performing Arts (now Lyric Theater) also commissioned Showbill to print their inaugural production of Ragtime , presumably to exclude advertisements from other automakers. The producers of the Broadway revival by Cabaret wanted to maintain the atmosphere of a shabby nightclub in Studio 54 and insisted on handing out the program booklet only after the event. For the sponsors of the Playbill this would have meant a lack of publicity, for this reason the magazine offered the producers Showbill as an alternative.
Playbill also responded to Stagebill with a counterstrike in their milieu, the magazine also began to report on venues for the classical arts such as opera houses and persistently wooed many long-standing Stagebill customers. In the spring of 2002, the Playbill signed a contract with Carnegie Hall ; this milestone was completed by the takeover of the expensive program booklet of the Metropolitan Opera and the subsequent contract with the New York Philharmonic (both are firmly rooted in Lincoln Center , formerly the most important bulwark of the Stagebill ). With the purchase of various existing programs from venues for the performing arts, the Playbill left its usual format and now also published completely customer-specific programs in the style of Stagebill . This fact, as well as the ongoing financial problems of the company, finally meant the publication of Stagebill . After a five-year head-to-head race with Playbill , Stagebill went bankrupt and was bought out from its competitor.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wicked Playbill Will Be Greenified for 10th Anniversary on Broadway . Playbill.com. September 30, 2013. Archived from the original on October 29, 2013. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 14, 2013.
- ^ National Rate Card . Playbill. January 2013. Retrieved November 14, 2013.
- ↑ Kate Dries: Daily Rehearsal: Theater nerds rejoice over Playbill Vault . In: WBEZ Onstage / Backstage , wbez.org. Retrieved December 2, 2011.
- ^ Playbill Passport App Launches: The First-Ever Mobile Companion to Broadway Programs. Playbill.com January 4, 2016.
- ↑ a b c d Zachary Pincus-Roth: Ask Playbill.com: Playbill® and Showbill® . In: Playbill , October 18, 2007. Retrieved November 14, 2013.
- ↑ Chris Jones: Stagebill is sold to rival Playbill . In: Chicago Tribune , June 10, 2002. Retrieved November 14, 2013.
- ↑ a b Melodrama at Met . In: Variety , variety.com, March 9, 1999. Retrieved November 14, 2013.
- ^ A b Jonathan Mandell: Theater's memory bank expands . In: The New York Times , NYTimes.com, August 25, 2002. Retrieved November 14, 2013.
- ↑ Playbill? Showbill? Stage bill? . Talkinbroadway.com. March 19, 1998. Retrieved November 14, 2013.
- ^ Robert Hofler: Playbill corners legit market . In: Variety , variety.com, June 9, 2002. Retrieved November 14, 2013.
