About a month ago, I received an ominous e-mail from C-VILLE News Editor Will Goldsmith. The e-mail included a link to a story about a three-year deal between venue management titan SMG, which runs the John Paul Jones Arena, and ticketing giant Live Nation, which purchased local music merchandise group Musictoday for $26.5 million. (The press release is here.)
"I can’t lay out, exactly, the significance of this at the moment," Goldsmith wrote to me. Fortunately for local music and arts fans, The Paramount Theater did it for us this morning.
The Paramount Theater joins Charlottesville’s growing mob of SMG and Live Nation-run venues. What will change?
The Daily Progress writes this morning that The Paramount signed a three-year management agreement with SMG, which should come as no surprise—the Paramount was currently in an "interim consulting agreement" (read: We all knew this was coming, people) with the management company. The Paramount’s board chairman Jay Ferguson and newly appointed general manager Mary Beth Aungier told the Progress that times are tight: Grants have dropped in recent years, according to Aungier, and Ferguson adds that the venue is "cognizant" of "macroeconomic trends," which earns him a triple word score, I think. (Just kidding.)
Perhaps most importantly for local art and music fans is Aungier’s comment that The Paramount’s mission and goals "have not changed." Which is an odd thing to say, given how closely tied programming and ticketing have become at SMG’s other venue, the John Paul Jones Arena. Nearly every major music event currently listed on the JPJ schedule—Elton John, Jay-Z, Nine Inch Nails—is being presented jointly by Live Nation and Starr Hill Presents, the organization that also promotes concerts at the Charlottesville Pavilion, and eventually will do the same at the Jefferson Theater.
There’s clearly a history of cooperation between Starr Hill Presents and Live Nation; given the deals between Live Nation and SMG and now SMG and The Paramount, it seems reasonable to ask what sort of Paramount programming changes might stem from SMG’s relationship with Live Nation. Will The Paramount become a smaller JPJ or Pavilion, a secondary Jefferson? Given that Live Nation and Starr Hill brought us people like The Boss, is this a bad thing? What do you think?
On another note, The Paramount and SMG are now hiring.
