http://www.universitydaily.net/NF/omf/ttech/ssiuname=WebOSTTN/ssipwd=TTN39C9C4F1/site_styles/ttech/shell_story_news.html?rkey=0000392+sid=20000920073011.6DDEC+cat=news+template=sto ry_without_photo.html No audience equals No Miller --------------------------------------------- Pam Smith Staff Writer Wednesday, September 20, 2000 Due to a lack of ticket sales, the Dennis Miller concert scheduled for Friday has been cancelled. Darryl Robbins, activities specialist for the Student Activities Board, said there are no plans to reschedule the event at a later time. "The decision to cancel the concert was a mutual decision between the Student Activities Board, Dennis Miller and the agency that represents him," he said. "The decision has to be mutual." In order for the university to break even on the event, Robbins said they needed to sell 7,100 tickets. As of Tuesday, only 780 tickets had been sold. Of these tickets, students bought 692. "Basically, we feel the major reason that the tickets weren't selling is that there were so many events scheduled and students didn't have the money to attend all of them," Robbins said. "They just made their choices to see other events." John Walker, at Select-a-Seat, agreed with Robbins about the cancellation. "We were probably oversaturated," he said. "With concerts like the Dixie Chicks, Elton John and an unprecedented four home games, the public just got too much of a good thing." For those people that have bought tickets to the event, Robbins said the university would issue a full refund for the tickets beginning Thursday during normal business hours. "A full refund will be issued for the tickets," Robbins said. "If students bought the tickets at the University Center, they just need to bring it back to receive a refund. If the ticket was bought off-campus, then they need to bring the ticket to the Select-a-Seat location in Memphis Place Mall." To date, Robbins said the exact amount of money lost on the event is unknown because billing for the event has not been received, but he said a financial loss is probable. "In the future, we will have to be more careful about scheduling events," he said. "I can't really comment yet on how much money we lost." Dan Burns, assistant operations manager at the United Spirit Arena, said the arena did not incur any losses due to the cancellation except for the possibility of booking another event. He said every event held at the arena is unique, but the average cost of using the entire arena costs $5,000 rent plus extra expenses spent on security, stagehands and other needs. Burns said he was not sure if any other events were turned down because of the Miller concert booking. "The only thing we could have lost was another performance," he said. Some of the other events Robbins believed may have deflected attention away from Dennis Miller were the tickets sold for the upcoming Creed and Pearl Jam concerts in October and the South Plains Fair, which starts Friday. Walker said tickets are still available for Creed and Pearl Jam, but all seats in front of the stage have been sold. In preparation for scheduling events, Robbins said the SAB conduct a survey with students to see which performance they would like to schedule at the university. When the survey was conducted in February, Miller was someone the students wanted to see. "A concert like this takes all the students getting involved," he said. "If the student body doesn't participate when buying tickets, the event doesn't work out." Kelli Stumbo, concert chair for SAB, said she is really disappointed with the cancellation of the concert because of all the effort her committee put into it. She said, in preparation for the event, the committee had contacted radio stations, taken out television ads on Monday Night Football and working on competitions geared toward organizations to increase ticket sales. "I'm upset at the lack of student support for this event," she said. "We spend months working on events that students want to see instead of no name people and they still don't come out and buy tickets." The SAB has been working to bring the concert to the arena for more than four months . Robbins said part of this process was establishing special discount tickets for students. For the Miller event, student tickets were sold for $25, while tickets to the general public sold for $32. The Miller show was the biggest event the SAB has scheduled this fall. Robbins said he is not sure if the cancellation of this event will become an obstacle for bringing shows to the university in the future. He said the mission of the SAB is to bring events to campus that "educate and entertain" the student body. Not even 1/7th of the required tickets were sold. Looks like Dennis will get more time to prepare for his MNF game. ------------------ visit & listen to KTXT on the web @ <A HREF="http://www.ttu.edu/~ktxt/ visit" TARGET=_blank>www.ttu.edu/~ktxt/ visit</A> my website @ <A HREF="http://home.icq.com/bayoucitybob/ 1999-2000" TARGET=_blank>http://home.icq.com/bayoucitybob/ 1999-2000</A> Sportscaster of the Year @ KTXT-FM, Lubbock
