Oh dear. Convention business keeps gettin' a'tougher.

gossi | October 13, 20:53 CET

Only 35 tickets? Ouchie....

krad | October 13, 20:59 CET

My bleary-eyed first glance at the headline made me think sadly the big W had devolved into a political blog--I thought it said: NeoCons Cancelled. I feel bad for Gina. I'd hate to be the one who has to tell her...unless you think she'll need a hug.

jaynelovesvera | October 13, 21:04 CET

Yeah that totally sucks for her. I would go, except you know, it being few thounds miles away, and is it true flan 2 is the last convention?

kurya | October 13, 21:44 CET

I think that since Gina was the only guest announced for NanoCon, people may have been waiting to see who else would be there. Add that to the fact Flan 2 was scheduled for a week later, and I can see why there were low ticket sales. The sci-fi con scene is very competitive.

impalergeneral | October 13, 21:52 CET

is it true flan 2 is the last convention?

Aye. It'll be a shame, though, as I'd imagine the hard core would turn up each year. Although, obviously, the scene will slip a bit year to year.

gossi | October 13, 22:23 CET

Ignorant of the inner workings of the con biz I ask: Is it typical to only have one announced guest for a long time? Or have a con with only one guest? Or schedule cons so closely together, even if different groups are putting on the respective cons? "Cause the resulting negative effects impalergeneral so eloquently points out would seem to be obvious to any business person.

jaynelovesvera | October 13, 22:52 CET

I think the reason there was only the one guest for so long was that Gina's schedule wouldn't allow her to come to Flan, so NanoCon was intended to be a Gina-centric con arranged solely for her. They had them so close together with the idea that people could come in early for Nano and stay until Flan, but a lot of people just couldn't afford to do that, it would seem.

And yes, Flan II is Booster's last *solely* Firefly con. But they're still running events and Booster Bash II next June is to have guests from all of Joss's shows.

[ edited by RachVG on 2006-10-13 21:01 ]

RachVG | October 13, 23:01 CET

jaynelovesvera asked;

Is it typical to only have one announced guest for a long time?
Depending on the event it is not unheard of to announce one guest.

Or have a con with only one guest?
It has been done before, not in the verse event world but they use to do it all the time in the trek event world.

Or schedule cons so closely together, even if different groups are putting on the respective cons?
Again it has been done before in different gernres even, it can work if you plan it properly. I am not associated with these organizers so I cannot speak as to why they attempted to do this. Most events that have successfully done this in the past typically announce the events around the same time with no more than a week apart and before tickets to either event goes onsale. That did not happen in this case.

"Cause the resulting negative effects impalergeneral so eloquently points out would seem to be obvious to any business person.
Granted it is not typical to do this but it has been done before but not for the same audience.

A few former examples from my past, I have been around the convention circuit for over 20 years and 200 events.

In the 80's & 90's when ST was at it's prime convention time, there were no less than 2-5 events in the US and Canada each weekend. Creation had the most events going on they eventually started doing dual weekends in different cities. To give you an idea....

Brent Spiner did a lot of dual events he also did back to back weekend events.

1 - weekend he was in Montreal on Saturday, Toronto on Sunday. The next weekend he was at an event in Orlando. The third weekend he was doing a big LA event. In every city but LA he was the sole headliner.

2 - Flip the star headliner. Creation use to do this trick when conventions were popular. Brent would appear in one city like Marlborro, MA on Saturday and then Manchester, NH on Sunday aat the sametime Marina Sirtis would be in Manchester on Saturday and Marlborro on Sunday.

3 - Creation itself would hold a convention for Star Trek in LA and the following week hold a convention for another show like Beauty & the Beast.

However, Creation had been in the business for nearly 20 years before doing these type of events. Up until a few years ago they did something similar with the verse, where they would have an event and one day it would be Buffy based and the next day be Star Trek, Stargate, or Farscape based.

Creation knows how the event cycle works, sometimes it's up and sometimes it's down we are seeing a down cycle now. Even Creation is cutting back the number of events it's doing next year and where they are doing them.

Hope that gives you some insight to the events game.

RavenU | October 13, 23:47 CET

RavenU, thank you so much, very enlightening. I had no idea it was that huge. I may change my name to ostrichhead since apparently my head's stuck in a hole in the groungd most of the time. With all those ST conventions going on at its prime, I would've thought the movies would've done Titanic-like numbers. Any idea why they didn't?

jaynelovesvera | October 14, 00:10 CET

Yes, I don't think this cancelation has anything to do with people not wanting to see Gina, and everything to do with it being exactly one week before FlanventionII. I know I couldn't consider either going down to LA two weekends in a row, or staying in LA a full week hanging out between the two conventions. I would love to see Gina at some convention where there is more than one guest and the whole thing can be a little more affordable, but I'm already spending too much time and money on FlanventionII to consider doing another convention the weekend before.

embers | October 14, 01:11 CET

jlv - as I think we've learned recently, really hardcore fans don't translate into huge box office. Really hardcore fans latch onto genre serialised shows which has driven conventions for a long time, as they're willing to spend. (Which is one of the arguments for D2DVD I suppose).

However, serialised genre shows are going down at the minute - BSG, Lost, VM are suffering ratings wise - which is beginning to show in the convention circuit.

Although I'm not an expert in the field. Only been to one.

[ edited by gossi on 2006-10-13 23:22 ]

gossi | October 14, 01:21 CET

Such disappointing news. I would certainly love to see Gina in person again, and I was planning on attending NanoCon. I'm sure Gina would do quite well holding her own with an audience... and it would be such a treat because she has rarely appeared at conventions.

But a big part of the delight of seeing the BDHs in person is watching them interract with one another. They all play wonderfully off each other, and the banter is priceless. Not that Gina needs to share the dais... but think what the sales for the event would been like if the announced guests had been Gina Torres and Alan Tudyk!

[ edited by 11thHour on 2006-10-13 23:49 ]

11thHour | October 14, 01:35 CET

and Asian Dan.

gossi | October 14, 01:37 CET

Well gossi, if you're going to start adding guests like Asian Dan, then Booster Events would have to relocate the con to a larger venue...

11thHour | October 14, 01:59 CET

wow. After the great time I had at my first con, the Queen Mary, I actually considered going to BE Scared in Burbank. A panel or episode commentary with Dru and Darla? Would be awesome. I am so glad I didn't buy tickets in advance. I'm local so no need for reservations.

I would be really upset with the guests that are left. They cancelled all the major Buffy guests except Christian Kane.

Is this common practice to cancel the day of the con like this?

Xane | October 14, 02:39 CET

I don't think it is a common practice Xane. Cancellations happen both on the part of guests and organisers but usually barring illness or emergency they are announced ahead of time.

helcat | October 14, 03:57 CET

Nooooo! Sigh. I was so totally considering flying to LA for a day to meet Gina : Valsadie | October 14, 04:47 CET

But Niska will be at Flan!! That will be great! Yay!

mifeng | October 14, 06:31 CET

I'm glad I clicked on this topic. I wasn't going to, since I wasn't planning to go to NanoCon anyway, but I was considering going to BE Scared for one day, so I was just going to use your link to BE's site to find out what day(s) Andy Hallett, Julie Benz and Juliet Landau were going to be there. Wow, hidden convention news that I vitally needed to know. Especially since the page on BE's site with this weekend's schedule still shows Julie, Juliet and Andy as originally planned.

deanna b | October 14, 08:42 CET

I think that's definitely a shame, and if I lived anywhere nearby I would definitely go and see Gina if I could.

I think that sometimes it would be hard to justify buying a ticket to see only one guest. However, with Gina I don't think that would be a problem for me as even in the past five years she's been in so many fantastic projects- Firefly, Serenity, Angel, Alias, 24, The Matrix sequels, and now Standoff... there would just be so much to ask her.

Razor | October 15, 02:37 CET