As the band sits backstage warming up a half-hour before the show, the doors open and a mass of people files in and rapidly fills the front rows. The flow of the crowd through the doors slows down as the seats in the front and middle are taken.
It's 15 minutes until showtime and the seats fill more and more slowly. The last handful scatters in with only seconds to spare. The band comes out and plays to a half-packed house.
Behind the scenes, the venue directors feel a sting in their wallets. Such was scene the last few times Ball State University played host to a mainstream concert at Emens Auditorium.
Bob Myers, director of John R. Emens Auditorium and Pruis Hall, said the loss of tens of thousands of dollars on recent concerts such as O.A.R., The Strokes and Ben Folds had disabled Emens from putting on "student-oriented rock shows."
Student-oriented shows have been disappointments, Myers said. Ben Folds fared the best, losing $1,453. O.A.R. finished nearly $15,000 in the red and The Strokes lost more than $32,643, he said.
O.A.R. was the last student-oriented show Emens hosted in October 2006.
Myers has no plans to bring another act to campus soon, he said.
"If it would pay for itself I would do it," Myers said.
He said a student committee, which could decide what would draw a large audience, would lead to more big time shows.
Emens used to work with the University Program Board to bring big acts to campus. The two haven't collaborated on a show in more than a year, but Myers said he didn't know why.
UPB President William Merkel said the board was trying to get back to the point where the two could work together. He said he would like to see the pair bring a recognizable concert to Emens.
Myers said Emens wouldn't host a student-oriented show until the budget allowed, and the risk was analyzed. Lack of popular music acts is not unique to Ball State. A lot of schools, such as Indiana and Purdue universities, don't have the funding to underwrite mainstream shows, he said.
"It's hard to find acts that everybody would pay money to see," Myers said.
Associate Director of Marketing Darcy Wood said Emens had several ways it sought student feedback about what students wanted to see on campus.
She said Emens had a suggestion box in its lobby for students to give their opinions. She said students also gave feedback on informal surveys at the Scramble Light and in front of Emens during ticket giveaways. Since the beginning of Fall Semester, Emens also has had Facebook.com and MySpace.com profiles, Wood said.
Neither approach has yielded a lot of feedback, she said. The surveys reached only the select few who walked by Emens or the Scramble Light. Since August 2007, the Facebook profile has added 575 friends and encourages them to use the wall as a suggestion box. It has added about 60 friends every week, and Wood hopes to have more than 800 by April, she said.
Wood said there were 23 posts.
The profile on MySpace has little exposure because it's harder to find Ball State students, she said.
The small amount of feedback has produced varied results, she said.
She said there was no consensus on what students wanted to see. The most consistent results are requests for artists such as Dane Cook, Rascal Flatts, Umphrey's McGee, Ellen DeGeneres and Demetri Martin, who are too expensive to host, she said.
Myers said one reason why Emens loses money on mainstream shows was because of the "misconception" that students should pay discount prices for tickets. Students received a survey asking how much money they would be willing to pay to see comedian Dane Cook at Emens. The majority of responses were $20.
If Emens were to host Dane Cook, ticket prices would have to be $80 to $100 to cover the cost, Myers said.
Freshman business management major Michael said he would spend as much money on a show at Emens as he would anywhere.
"It's not like I'd pay less just because it's at Emens," he said.
Ball State has had several mainstream shows come to campus that made significant profits, he said.
Myers said ticket sales were to blame for either the financial success or failure of a performance, and it's hard to predict the financial outcome. Comedy and country music shows have been the most successful, Myers said.
In the last few years, the Gretchen Wilson concert and Larry The Cable Guy each made more than $11,000 and Keith Urban's concert made more than $14,500, he said.
Wood said bringing a widely popular act to campus gets more difficult when considering the hidden costs.
"A show that costs $40,000 can end up costing $80,000," she said.
Myers said the stage labor for a musical act was expensive and could cost up to $6,000. Adding on the advertising, catering, hotel, transportation and maintenance costs, Emens can spend up to $30,000 after the performance fee, he said.
Wood said small, inconsistent feedback made finding a suitable act hard. She said it took time for suggestions for one performance to accumulate.
"There's a small window when artists are in our price range and sometimes we miss it," Wood said.
Myers said putting on a student-oriented show was a big risk. When a performance flops, it hurts, he said.
He said with no way to make up the money lost, Emens couldn't afford to keep taking risks. Students have to do without popular concerts or shows, he said, and he encouraged students to see more performing arts.
"The university offers students opportunities to see the performing arts at drastically reduced prices," Myers said. "It's much more reasonable than some of our peer institutions."
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