99seats: Bailouts or I Don't Mean To Be A Dick, But...:
When I first heard that they were $300,000 in the hole, I was shocked. The financial crisis had hit a lot of places in a lot of different ways, but it seemed like a lot of money to suddenly go missing. Way too much money. I was actually very gratified to read that article, because then it makes sense. Plus I was glad to find that there were consequences for someone. Like the bankers and the bailout, too often with arts organizations, they have these shortfalls and whatnot and do these fundraising pushes, but the people at the top keep their jobs. That doesn't make any sense at all. If we expect the CEO of Lehman Brothers to step down, we should expect the CEO of a theatre to step down. We should expect the board to step down. Their whole job, legally, is to check the numbers and make sure everything is kosher. And clearly, they didn't.
These things happen in theatres because we let them happen. Bad managers, sometimes even criminal managers come along and they bankrupt our theatres and we all bond together in the spirit of kumbaya and the community and bail them out. And, sure, they hire better managers immediately, but we all know that down the line, there will be another bad manager, or overoptimistic manager, or whatever. Like the banking industry, most theatres are living just outside of their means and eventually, it's going to catch up to them. But have no fear: they can just beg their way out of it.
2:47 PM
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