Shorter Broadway League Survey

Detailed summaries of the '08-'09 season survey here and here. Info on full report here.

-63% of the Broadway audience is now comprised of tourists, pretty evenly split between half domestic and half international. (Combination of foreigners on the rise and US economy dampening Americans' travel & leisure habits.)

-That makes the tourist/New Yorkers audience split about 60/40, with the latter split sort of evenly between almost 20% NYC metro folk and almost 20% suburbanites.

-Average number of shows a Broadway fan sees per season: 4.2 People who go to plays see more Broadway shows and say they count more on critic rec's (tell that to Brighton Beach Memoirs!). Musical-lovers go less often and rely more on word of mouth.

-As Variety's Gordon Cox puts it, on Broadway: "the average theatergoer [is] still well educated, well off, over 40, white and female." (Which might account for the runaway success of Nora Ephron's Off Broadway "show" as well.)

-Despite a holding-steady average age of 42.2 (yikes, something I'm scarily approaching myself!), the League is optimistic about the indicators for younger audiences: almost 16%(!) are now 25-34.

-Lastly, says Cox, more bad news for dead trees: "Ads that logged the highest awareness tally were those on the Internet (cited by 7.5% of people surveyed), although unsurprisingly, these were more effective with younger auds than older ones."