 Posted
6/26/2012 9:59:00 AM
In 24 hours we launch our new website www.atbcomedy.com with the full line-up for the 2012 Festival with links to buy tickets. Our media launch is set for noon tomorrow at ATB Financial 9888 Jasper Avenue and will include a free comedy show with Monique Marvez from LA. Everyone is welcome to attend. Listen to 630 CHED, CISN Country and Joe FM to win your way in. Follow @GroseAndrew and @ComedyEdmonton on Twitter for more chances to win tickets.
It feels like there's no turning back now. I swore after the last festival I was done. It was just so much work... so much risk. In the end it was a big success and, after taking a few months off, I allowed myself to be talked into another one. This festival is bigger than the one last year with more moving parts. There's an amateur competition, a kids show, an on-tour component, and we're bringing in bigger names which means bigger financial risk.
We're starting to get calls to line up interviews for TV, radio and print. That always makes me nervous especially radio despite being on a radio show myself. It feels especially strange to be on CBC, for example, because they're a competitor or to even be on CHED in the morning because I do that from the same studio as our show but it's not our show. It's hard to explain. It's like coming home from work and finding a different family living in your house.
We've purchased advertising with Corus (of course) and The Journal and on-line and on billboards and on CTV which means we're writing cheques before we've sold a single ticket. By the time we're done we'll have dropped $50,000 in ads and yet we'll still run into lots of people that don't know anything about a comedy festival. I'll fret over every unsold ticket every day until October 17th because that's just what I do. I'm sure we'll second guess every deal we made, every show we produced and every detail of the festival right down to what should go in the goody bags for the comics. No one will see the work that went into organizing something this big but, by the same token, no one will notice our mistakes except for us.
At the wrap party show on October 21st I'll tell Graham and my wife that I quit and they'll both laugh and say okay. Then in January I'll start organizing the next one.
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