CUB/SpringFest News

SpringFest, CUSA and CUB in General

2007-03-14T15:35:00.000-04:00

We had planned on having a transition act between Demetri and Pablo, however that is no longer the case. It came down to a question of money and we aren't really in a position to spend any more on this show. Further, we had discussed the possibility of having some sort of SpringFest related events during the week prior to the show, however at this time that also seems somewhat financially infeasible. Sorry guys.

If you want a bigger and better SpringFest and more on campus programming please email CUSA and support our request for a budget increase for next year. We are asking for a significant increase in our SpringFest budget as well as our general budget and your support will help to insure that happens.

Thanks!

For more information about the show itself please head over to the SpringFest 07 Site.

Contracts and Confirmations

2007-02-28T15:46:00.000-05:00

Pablo’s contract was reviewed, revised and approved by Risk Management today. However, this does not mean that we can guarantee Pablo for SpringFest yet; the contract revisions still need to be approved by Pablo and his management, a process that can require several days. Further most performance contracts include a back out clause. This clause allows the talent to break the contract up to 30 days prior to the performance date, in the event that something they cannot pass up comes along. That however happens quite rarely – an example where that might happen would be being invited to host SNL.

Also, Demetri tentatively confirmed today, provided we are able to meet two requests:
1. He opens the show.
2. We provide a buffer between his performance and Pablos.
We do not anticipate either of these two conditions to be a problem. More on that as it develops.

So that’s pretty much it: Demetri Martin and Pablo Francisco, April 7th…

Pablo Confirmed

2007-02-02T10:50:00.000-05:00

Pablo Francisco has confirmed for April 7th. While this still isn't quite the guarantee that a signed contract is, its still very good news. This means that as of now, you can plan on SpringFest being the 7th of April (duh).

Still no word yet on Demetri, however I'd expect to have him confirmed by the end of next week.

Its important to realize that even after we have signed contracts from the talent they can still bail out of the contract up to 60, or sometimes even 30 days, before the show without any penalty. This allows them to accept an offer to be on SNL or something of the sort, however it rarely happens that this clause is invoked.

Tentative ticket prices are $12 for pre-sale associated college students and staff and $20 for community members and day of show sales.

Pablo and Demetri

2007-01-31T20:02:00.000-05:00

Pablo Francisco and Demetri Martin will be bid as co-headliners for SpringFest. Which ideally will be on April 7th. Keep in mind this is only a bid, so there are no guarantees at this point. More information as it becomes available.

Bid Rejected

2007-01-24T13:38:00.000-05:00

Bob Saget is unfortunately unable to commit to our date, one of his family members is extremely sick and hes just not willing to work right now as a result of that.

Where does that leave us? Thats pretty well up to you, please leave us some comments about what direction you'd like to see us head in. Ideally I'd like to have another bid out by next week, but I think I may wait until after the WTSC interview on Monday night. Going by the past survey results the top choices would be Flogging Molly or Dave Attel.

We'll probably ask for another Jolt poll in a day or two, once we've reached some consensus.

As I've said many times this is the nature of this business, one never really knows what to expect. Sometimes sure things fall through.

WTSC Interview

2007-01-22T21:02:00.001-05:00

Things are moving along smoothly on the bid for Bob Saget. We might even have a confirmed date and a contract in hand by Friday.

More importantly, in our on going effort to be more open about SpringFest and to allow as much feedback and input as is possible, I'll be live on the air on WTSC 91.1 Monday, January 29th at 8pm. Please feel free to call in (315.268.7657), IM or eMail.

Poll The Entire Campus

2007-01-17T10:27:00.000-05:00

Why doesn't CUB re-poll the entire campus?

Short answer, we don't have time. It takes time to get the approval for the survey, to have the survey set up, to email it out, to allow people time to complete the survey and finally to process the results. The quickest turn around I've been able to do so far is more than 2 weeks. Unfortunately we don't have that kind of time to spare right now (there is a lot of planning and lead work that goes into a show like this).

Why do a Jolt poll?

Jolt polls take me an email or IM to a Jolt God to setup, provide very quick feedback and reach a decent portion of the people on campus.

How representative are Jolt polls and are they accurate?

Thats an open ended question. Given that almost 700 people have voted I'd say its pretty representative. In terms of accuracy, I talk to Ron Ayers who reviews the voting logs and vets the results. On short order its the best I can do.

Bob Saget and Your Comments!

2007-01-16T18:53:00.000-05:00

This is not the Bob Saget you've seen on Full House, nor is this the Bob Saget you see on America's Funniest. Yes, it's the same guy, but the comedy is not the same. That said he's selling out college larger than ours, U Conn for instance sold out a 2,500 seat room with him last September, UMass Amherst sold a 4000 seat room with him and Bates did a 1900 seat room, he also did Canisus earlier this year.

Hes also directed the movie Dirty Work with Norm MacDonald.

In terms of his stand up comedy it's dirty, this won't be a child friendly show. We'll be advertising it as at least 17 and over. For some clips from his live shows check out youtube.

In response to the Jolt Guest Name post at 2:22 pm:

"SUNY Potsdam is trying to do a comedy show (Lewis Black). Rather than possibly compete for their attendance, the board felt it would be better to follow the data and cover a different market."

Why did they choose Saget over Flogging then?

Yes, Potsdam is also doing comedy. Yes, we said earlier in the year that we would try to pursue music so as to reach a different part of the market. However that was a few months ago, and consequently things have changed. The top musical choice out of the voting was Breaking Benjamin, however they are not working out for us. We ran two Jolt polls, one before break and the one that started on Saturday. These two polls pitted the second musical choice against the first and second comedy options respectively and showed no real favor either way. In light of that we were forced to reconsider our original position.

We decided that a comedian would probably have wider appeal than a punk show, and so that's the direction we're heading in.

In response to the Jolt Guest Name at 2:15 pm:

a one act show? Is he that expensive? We got lewis black, stephen lynch, and some guy i don't know but was good enough, for presumably the same price. if he thinks he is just as good as those three combined, then I don't want to see him anymore.

Yes, he is really that expensive. Lewis/Steven was an amazing deal, we caught them at just the right moment -- before they got huge. Lewis is now $50K by himself and Steven is now $30K. We paid $30K for both of them. Sadly that's not something that's likely to happen again. As to why we're pursuing him, that's pretty simple, he came out second in terms of voting for comedians.

Using the information you provided us through surveys, polls and posting both in the blog and on the jolt we're doing our best to give you the show you want.

Bid Change

2007-01-16T11:44:00.000-05:00

We are withdrawing our bid for Breaking Benjamin due to the length of time is taking them to respond as well as concerns regarding their recent changes in touring schedule.

Given the how close the current Jolt poll is, the board has decided to attempt to bring Bob Saget to campus instead. We feel that his comedy will have a wider campus appeal than Flogging Molly. Its important to be aware that given his higher price, it is likely that he would be the only act for the show. That said, we are trying to arrange things so that we can have a battle of the bands and possibly inflatable fun the day before the show, to provide more of a SpringFest weekend, than a single day show.

These changes are not yet set in stone and we welcome your input into the process (IE: feel free to leave comments, post on the Jolt, etc).

Update..

2006-12-12T14:10:00.000-05:00

No news yet from Breaking Benjamin, however they did just confirm a few dates in February. Meaning they are working on their Spring touring schedule, they just haven't made it into April booking yet. The whole Agent/Talent business pretty well shuts down this Friday, meaning we probably won't have any news to report until the first of the year. That said, if we hear something we'll definitely pass it along.

Weird Al is out, he'll be in Europe for the Spring. Sorry guys. Bob Saget may be the same sort of deal, hes booking up into the 30-35K range and selling out larger venues, which may place him just outside of our budget, that said hes still not off the table.

Finally, availability for Flogging Molly or Dropkick still appear solid for our dates.

Bid Sent

2006-11-29T12:08:00.000-05:00

The bid for Breaking Benjamin was approved by risk management and was faxed to our agent. Now we wait.

Also, we added some more information to the Weird Al post, and corrected an omission in the Survey 2 results.

Why didn't Weird Al win?

2006-11-28T15:23:00.000-05:00

Didn't Weird Al get like double the votes and points than Breaking Benjamin. Why isn't Weird Al getting the first bid? -- Guest, The Daily Jolt

Across both surveys the support was decidedly for music.
The musical genre with the most votes was rock.
SUNY Potsdam is trying to do a comedy show (Lewis Black). Rather than possibly compete for their attendance, the board felt it would be better to follow the data and cover a different market.

For reference here are the original survey results.

For the record, there were 99 comedy acts and 187 musical acts, a ratio of slightly less than 0.53. Applying that ratio to the results presented before yields the following results for comedy:


Act                 Raw Votes     Score
!!BLANK VOTE!!      834.75        3910.87
WEIRD AL YANKOVIC   96.99         703.31
BOB SAGET           91.69         675.75
DAVE ATTELL         67.31         436.72
STEPHEN LYNCH       59.89         421.35
COLIN MOCHRIE       56.18         400.68
ANDY DICK           49.82         309.52
JIM GAFFIGAN        38.16         287.79
CHARLIE MURPHY      36.57         246.98
NORM  MC DONALD     40.28         215.18

"So if you weren't going to do a comedy show regardless of how many votes any act received, why would you even offer it as a choice in your survey?" -- Anonymous, 8:17 AM

Yes, that exactly why on the survey with the acts on it we asked this:
"Based on the acts you selected above, would you rather see music or comedy?
Music 320
Comedy 105"

Yes, we neglected to post that in the actual survey results when we put them up. Sorry about that, we've since put that information up (even though it was in the results linked off the page). Sorry about that.

Bid Preperations

2006-11-28T13:59:00.000-05:00

The board moved to approve a bid on Breaking Benjamin at last nights meeting. I'll be talking with the insurance office tomorrow (Wednesday) around noon; pending their approval we'll be sending the bid off to the band. The band can then either accept, reject or sit on the bid (sitting on a bid means they take their time to respond, sometimes this can be several weeks).

Before anyone asks, we are only allowed to extend one bid at a time. This avoids the situation where more than one act accepts a bid for the same show; a situation which could create date, cost and headlining issues.

If they reject the bid we either look at a different act, or rebid at a higher price (if we can afford it). Hopefully the fact that they had to back out on us last year will buy us some leverage in terms of price and speedy response.

If the bid is accepted we will receive a contract from the band which will then be reviewed and amended by insurance, and signed and returned to the band for their approval. Again, they can accept, reject or sit on it. Basically like any contract it can be bounced back and forth several times before a mutually satisfactory agreement is reached or one side gives up.

2006-11-23T20:12:00.000-05:00

This is going to be a little brief as its Thanksgiving and all.

438 people attempted at least part of the survey. 87 of you either can't read, or attempted to circumvent the survey method. By which I mean, you voted for the same act in more than one position (IE: the fellow who voted for Ween 10 times). Adjusting for this, and accepting only highest ranking an act was given by any one respondent we have:

Music ( Top 11):

Act                    Raw Votes     Score
!!BLANK VOTE!!         724           3065
BREAKING BENJAMIN *    92            705
FLOGGING MOLLY *       92            669
DROPKICK MURPHYS *     85            516
GUSTER                 69            471
OUR LADY PEACE         81            468
HINDER                 62            408
SHINEDOWN *            64            376
BLOODHOUND GANG        65            370
REEL BIG FISH          62            361

Comedy (Top 11):

Act                    Raw Votes     Score
!!BLANK VOTE!!         1575          7379
WEIRD AL YANKOVIC      183           1327
BOB SAGET              173           1275
DAVE ATTELL            127           824
STEPHEN LYNCH          113           795
COLIN MOCHRIE          106           756
ANDY DICK              94            584
JIM GAFFIGAN           72            543
CHARLIE MURPHY         69            466
NORM  MC DONALD        76            406

Full rankings are in this file.

The raw raw vote counts are based on the number of people that selected a given act at any position in the survey.

Scoring is based on the number of votes received at each poll position times the value of that position. Meaning that selecting an act as your top choice gave that act 10 points, as your second best choice 9 and so on down to 1 point.

It is important to note that a large number of people failed to vote for any band or comedian, or failed to fill in all of the slots, which is what "!!BLANK VOTE!!" indicates.

Based on the acts you selected above, would you rather see music or comedy?
Music 320
Comedy 105

For the last several years CUB showed a pre-release movie every week in Cheel Commons, we stopped this year due to poor vendor support, high prices and generally low attendance. Movies are rather expensive (the volume discount is $450/week if we select films for the entire year). Do you agree with the decision to not show movies?
Yes 287
No 139

For the last several years CUB has done drive-in movies during the early part of the fall. We stopped doing these movies this year because the screens we were using last year were damaged by wind. We are considering the purchase of a different type of screen to address this issue so that we may hold these movies again this fall. The screens we are looking at are designed for outdoor use and cost between $4,000 and $8,000. Do you think purchasing such a screen is a good investment?
Yes 248
No 174

CUB is considering purchasing a number of tickets to the local cinema each week and providing them to the students free of charge. We envision a lottery, which students could enter at the beginning of each week; students would be allowed to request a limited number of tickets when enrolling in the lottery and the tickets would be made available for pickup afterwards. Obviously the viability of this depends on negotiations with the local cinema. Would you be interested in this?
Yes 288
No 133

Would you prefer the idea above (tickets to the local cinema) to the weekly movies CUB ran in Cheel?
Yes 216
No 206

Would you be interested in Club 99 having a karaoke machine and/or a karaoke night?
Yes 187
No 232

The comments are available here.

All of the raw data, as well as the scripts used to process it, their output and everything else used for this survey are available here. Be sure to check out the readme so that you know what the files mean.

If you find any issues with the method by which we computed the results, problems with the processing script, etc, please let us know.

Where do we go from here?
We'll look over these results, discuss them at our next meeting (which is Monday, at 6pm in Cheel Barben Room A) and then discuss them with our booking agent. With all that done we'll select an act to bid, get it approved by insurance and submit the bid. Of course the blog will be updated as more information is available.

Thanks for your help!

Survey 2 Out

2006-11-09T14:19:00.000-05:00

As many of you have no doubt noticed the second round of surveys started filtering into peoples email boxes today. Please take the time to fill it out!

To clarify a bit about what we mean when we call something an 'insurance risk', basically this means we have concerns that the act could result in moshing, or similar behavior. Again this does not mean that we will not try to get the act in question, if selected, but that we will be more circumspect in doing so.

If you believe we have mislabeled an act as a risk, or there is an act on the list that is not labeled and should be, please leave a comment here.

For instance, the Disco Biscuits should not be labeled as a risk. Ooops.

To reiterate the risk assessment was made by the board at our weekly meeting. Its just an opinion, its certainly not set in stone.

What does a risky act mean for the show?
Possibly higher insurance costs and definitely more security. The long and short of the situation is that we cannot have moshing. If people mosh they will be warned, if they most again they will be ejected. If the situation escalates from there, we will have to stop the show. This is the university policy and sadly there is little we can do about it.

Whats next?
After this survey closes, at 11:59PM on the 21st, the board will look over the results, talk to our agent and bid a headlining act. This act will be selected based on the results of the survey, provided they are available etc. The results of this survey will be posted here, just like the results of the last one, along with any information regarding bids.

Why are some acts listed in this post not listed on the survey?
Acts with a cost of '$Call for Details' or availability of 'No College Dates' or 'No Current Plans' were removed.

Possible Acts

2006-10-19T22:14:00.000-04:00

Based on the survey results we have a list of available acts from our booking agent. The list is very much subject to change, and in no way does an acts presence or absence on the list actually imply that the will actually be available for our date or within the constraints of our budget. The prices listed are estimates at best, and generally reflect the minimum asking price for an act. A plus sign following a price indicates that the actual offer price will probably need to be significantly higher than the one listed on the sheet. Further, acts marked with ‘call for information’ are way outside of our price range.

We are posting this list for your information. To give you an idea both of what is available and how much it might cost. We will perform additional surveys in the coming days to further narrow the field. Please leave your comments regarding the information here using the comments link.

We are presenting information about the top two genres selected.

That having been said, on to the pdfs:
Comedy
Rock

There are other altneratives. They are available here be aware that we are capping the maximum act cost at $30,000. Suggestions beyond this level will be ignored. Acts not available in the Spring will be ignored. Links to you're best friends amazing local band will also, likely, be ignored.

Flame On!

Survey Results!

2006-10-17T11:26:00.000-04:00

And the results are in, we had 869 responses. Since there is a lot of information to look at click here to se the detailed results.

Here is the quick and dirty executive summary for those that dont feel like reading through it all:
Strong support for music (45%) and music and a comedian (37%). Comparably weak support for only a comedian (17%).

Strong support for one large act (83%).

Genres (Top 5):
Based on Most Interested Only:

Rock (488)
Comedy (349)
Metal (150) / Country (150)
Hip Hop/Rap/Rapcore (127)
Pop (125)

Based on Most Interested + .5*(Interested)

Rock (607.5)
Comedy (454.5)
Hip Hop/Rap/Rapcore (237)
Ska, Reggae, Dub (233)
Pop (212)

Based on (Most Interested + .5*(Interested)) - (No Way! + .5*(Not Interested))

Rock (555.5)
Comedy (300)
Country(-24.5)
Ska, Reggae, Dub (-69.5)
Metal (-97)

Other breakdowns are possible, but they are left as an exercise to the reader -- for instance we could have counted the neurtal votes as postive or negative.

The rest of the data seems representative of the campus (male/female response rate, class break ups etc), suggesting that the survey is an accurate picture of the campus.

We will use this data to generate a possible act survey in the near future.

Thanks!

Dane Cook

2006-09-27T12:46:00.000-04:00

Dane Cook does NOT play colleges, he'd rather do movies. He turned down 5 routable college dates in 10 days last fall, to the tune of ONE MILLION dollars (that's $200,000 a date). He will not play here and even it he would we cannot afford him. I'm sorry.

On an unrelated note, we now have dates reserved for the Arena, 4/6-7 & 4/13-14. Of course that's tentative.

The old blog is available here.

On Movies and Such

2006-09-26T14:38:00.000-04:00

The pre-release movies we were renting are quite expensive, on the order of $500 a week, if you get one movie a week for the whole school year (you get a volume discount, the fewer movies you get the more they cost). For obvious copyright reasons we aren't supposed to show just any movie we want, whenever we feel like it -- we have to go through a company that rents performance rights. Unfortunately there is really only one company around that does that for colleges, and that's Swank. Equally unfortunate is the fact that Swank isn't the greatest company around. Several times last year the movies that arrived were messed up -- bad sound, missing subtitles or just completely the wrong movie.

Given the expense, poor quality and lack of attendance for non drive in movies we have been investigating other options.

We probably would have continued to use Swank, at least for the outdoor movies (albeit at a higher price), except that last year we broke two screens last year showing these movies. Unfortunately the fastfold screens we were using aren't designed for outdoor use, and so a relatively light gust of wind is enough to break the metal support frame. As a result of this OIT, who actually owns the screens we were using, decided not to let us use them. In light of the fact that we broke them last year, this seems completely reasonable.

We've been investigating two alternatives:
1: To purchase an outdoor inflatable screen, to allow us to continue doing outdoor movies. The screen is a sizable investment, on the order of $5,000. Before we make an investment like that we need to do some more research -- not to mention that CUSA has to approve the purchase. Unfortunately, there is no way the screen will be ready for this semester, if we did decide to buy it.
2: To purchase seats passes to the Roxy which would be made available to the students for free.
Unfortunately Jeff Sotz, who owns the local theaters (the rosy included) tends not to return peoples phone calls -- I've been trying to get a hold of him for the better part of 5 months.

Wow, Its like a REAL blog...

2006-09-26T10:29:00.000-04:00

So, welcome to the new SpringFest/CUB blog...

We've started our yearly SpringFest planning, and you should be receiving an email at your Clarkson address very soon from Zoomerang. This is a survey, you should fill it out. This will be the first of several surveys for this years SpringFest. Please complete them, as it gives us a better idea what you the students want from your SpringFest experience.

Also, since this is actually a blog, you can leave comments, whine, complain and generally degrade our morale as you see fit. Have fun!