Let's Review
by Sean Carolan

Proving, if nothing else, that ALTROK is capable of going back to the trough more than once, I'd like to take another momentary look at last Friday's Dollar Bill Benefit, this time going beyond personal impressions and wistful reminiscences.

This time, let's take a look at the numbers.

At about 1:45 AM, as last call was rippling out thorugh the various satellite bars in the Tradewinds nightclub, I made a very informal estimate of the size of the crowd. I came up with a number hovering between 300 and 350, and that was for the end of the night.

Informally, I've heard that the take for the evening (donated to Bill and his family for the purpose of defraying their costs) was between $15,000 and $20,000. Given that tickets were $15 ($20 at the door) and that the bar tab belonged to the club, it counts out, give or take, to a total attendance of about a thousand people.

A thousand people.

Through word of mouth.

Without a commercial station's sponsorship.

Without much in the way of advertising at all.

A thousand people.

That's not a focus group. That's a focused group. And they're indicative of the many others who might have wanted to go but couldn't, or who didn't know about the show in the first place (sorry, Bart).

A thousand people walked into a nightclub one night and placed fifteen to twenty thousand dollars in a cash register. That sounds like a motivated audience to me.

Hello? Radio? Are you listening?

©2002 Sean Carolan