12,557 page views on 5/6 - my most popular post ever
RINGLING IN RETREAT? - One bot mutt for sale? Has appeared with the Greatest Show on Earth.
What is happening to Ringling? To Circus or not to circus? That may be the pressing question dogging Kenneth Feld for the next ten months while he creates an “all new’ edition. How new? How different from the first? Does he need ten months in hiatus to figure it out? Thriving entertainments usually have next year’s model in the works, ready to take up the parade when the current cast leaves it.
Seems severe to me. As I understand it, when a company closes down for an extended period of time, usually the reason is too re-invent itself or its product line – in order to stay in business. Ringling closed down mid-way in the 1956 tour when John Ringling North struck the big top for good and made known his plans to move it indoors. Some fans hoped he would change his mind. No luck. He had foreseen a more viable future ahead.
If the Felds have been reading the outcry of unhappy Ringling customers on Yelp (average 1.5 stars), they can’t ignore the enthusiasm most Americans still evidently feel for animals and clowns. When you take away two of the three staples of circus, up goes a roar from the masses. The last to cry ‘no!” on Yelp:
"I've never been so humiliated in all my life I'm going to the circus in New York City at Madison Square Garden for many years as a child every year I never missed a circus there were animals and clowns I don't know what Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus is doing now with these acrobats nobody wants to see acrobats a circus is not a circus without animals and clowns it was a waste of my money I am so disappointed I don't know what in the world to do I will never attend another Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus again without the animals and clowns."
"Humiliated" That's a new one. From AI?
I have no idea what their business has been. I only know that when Ringling played the 18,000 seat Crypto.Com Arena in Los Angeles, according to an inside source at the arena who took my call to inquire about business, they were drawing between six and eight thousand per show.
Strategic blundering? Even the smartest of showman can make big mistakes: When Feld removed the elephants from the show, winning high cheer from animal rights hysterics and their fawning media acolytes, I was left dumbfounded by his not having at the same pivotal moment also removed the big cage act as well. This gave PETA sanction to continue harassing customers outside the arenas. Give them a dog and pony show, and they'd come off looking like fools.
And then, six years later, when Feld unveiled his comeback edition., I was left equally baffled by his wholesale elimination of clowns and animals. Will ten months in circus rehab give him pause to consider a more fulfilling outcome?
What to expect? At the moment, even Keneth Feld may not know. But he has plenty of time to bring off perhaps the most spectacular comeback in show business history by reinstating the dazzling totality of what Ringling once stood for. It is not irrational to imagine dogs and ponies and horses and kitty cats, among other domestics, bringing back a major part of “the greatest show.” When I saw the last old-school edition around 2017, a pig coasting down a slide nearly stole the show .
The circus that no longer dares speak its name needs to come back.
CIRCUS BALLYHOO --- FACE OF A BARN TO FACEBOOK
Long gone are the days when splashy 24 sheet lithos covered half the town. When was the last time you spotted circus imagery on a billboard? Across the Big Pond, some Brit circuses are now almost exclusively marketing on social media, and gradually giving up on newspaper ads pushing discount coupons. As covered by Douglas McPherson in The Stage, show owner Zippo revealed that he has stopped running them because nobody appeared at the ticket window with one. That is, while there was a ticket window. Heck, even the red wagon is disappearing over there as Paulos and Circus Zyair are shutting theirs down.
But not so fast, argues Julia Kirilova of the Big Kid Circus: “Posters still have a big impact. People still expect to see them. We are a business which depends a lot on feelings and nostalgia. Everyone knows circus and has a distinct memory of it. Our job is to find a way to make them remember that feeling, whether that is through a short video clip on TikTok or a poster.”
(I guess I was a dinosaur a few years ago, when I picked up a coupon offered in a Vargas newspaper ad, took it with me to the show and tried getting a resistant lady at the ticket window to honor it. She nearly scowled, claiming never to have known of such a thing. I let it go, feeling like a stool pigeon from a long lost world.)
Zippo told McPherson that everyone buys on-line tickets on their phones as they enter the midway. No need for cash and tickets. And Sir Douglas rues a day walking the grounds where only yesterday, billowing tents had adorned it. “There won’t even be a discarded leaflet or ticket stub in the grass to prove it was over here?"
Well ... maybe with luck, a loose nut from a bot mutt?
REVOLUTIONARY CIRCUS REVIEWING LISTS CROWD SIZES
Also over there in Brit land, get this: A reviewer for the Circus Diaries blog, Charlie Holland, is listing crowd sizes. Recent disclosures: 300 (about one third of the tent) at Zippos; 500 (half a house) at Big Kid. That's quite refreshing, although yes, I can imagine that many fans would rather not know. But this does not surprise me. I often see those kinds of turnouts when I go to a circus.
Still, it's nice to see a reviewer taking the time to address both parts that make up a circus performance, the show itself and the audience. A trend? Don't bank on it.
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