Johnny Dare @ Rockfest 2012
Raise your hand if you believe the crowd counts at local events are the real deal?
Anybody…nobody?
It’s long been established that not even KC Police employ a methodology or bother to make a concerted effort to count crowds. So it comes as little surprise that ridiculous numbers abound, like when the Royals won the World Series a few years back.
Million Man March, anyone?
Still it’s disappointing when even halfway serious local media like the newspaper continue to “report” unsubstantiated and often exaggerated crowd numbers.
Take radio station 98.9 The Rock‘s annual Rockfest…
For years, the station has boasted of – and local media have dutifully reported – attendance figures of 50,000 for the banal bacchanalia.
“Fifty-thousand hard-rock fans cranked it at Kansas Speedway on Saturday for the 26th annual ear-splitting bacchanal that is Rockfest,” the Star’s Mike Henricks blathered last year.
That was then.
And today, in the wake of the recent axing of Star music writer Tim Finn, longtime freelancer Bill Brownlee “reports” that this year’s crowd was down to 30,000 attendees yesterday.
That’s a 40 percent decline, not just from last year, but the past 10.
Brownlee covered the event in 2008 as well, reporting, “In spite of allowing capacity to increase to 50,000, Rockfest was no more congested than last year.”
OK, time out…
At this stage of the game, locals who even halfway care recognize that given the opportunity, event organizers and sponsors – and anyone with an interest in pimping the public – will lie through their teeth if they think they can get away with it.
Yet how does one explain this year’s sudden, unexpected drop by nearly half?
Have hip-hop and long-in-the-tooth deejays like Johnny Dare taken their toll?
You decide.
“Rockfest at the Kansas Speedway draws 30,000 — a big, loud, happy family,” the Star headline reads.
Even at that – given a 20,000 person crowd count reduction – you have to wonder what the real number is.
Face it though, anyway you cut the cake, a drop of nearly half is a headline grabbing decline for the Cowtown’s arguably most celebrated dirtbag dustup.
The only thing missing at this point are the headlines.
Anybody, nobody?
The wife and I, as live music addicts and children of the 70s/80s attended yesterday from about 4pm until 11:30. We’re much too old for the full scale revelry and consumed maybe 4 beers between the two of us. I’m really not much for estimating crowd size, but if attendance has fallen, I think it can be directly tied to moving it from downtown, all the way out in BFE Kansas. Now, that being said, the venue itself is much more suited to hosting an event of this size. Parking is better. Much better bathroom facilities. Alot more space to move around and not constantly rubbing up against your fellow sweaty patrons. More room for vendors. For the money, you won’t find a better value at least in the number of musical acts you can take in. Especially with today’s touring musical acts who seem hell bent on squeezing out every last dime on insane ticket prices. To me, the crowd seemed every bit as large as before, but just more spread out.
Guy:
My bet is they usually check with the station on the attendance numbers but this year – touched base with the venue that’s used to giving out actual numbers and they told them it was 30,000.
My guess is the station will pressure somebody at the racetrack into calling in a correction to 50,000.
Let’s wait and see!
I was there with Morgan Fairchild.
Nice….any trouble on the home front afterwards?
No. I told my wife I was there with Brian Williams and we were delayed getting home because he was laying down suppressing fire for Hillary, who was there too, by the way. She says hi and wants you to come visit here in Leavenworth.
Yeah…..THAT’s the ticket!
My biggest takeaway from the article is finding out that Tim Finn is no longer with the Star. I have read Tim’s stuff for years and he was always nice when I ran into him at a show. Any idea on what Tim’s plans are? Thank you.
I don’t, sorry…
One possibility might be a KCUR gig if they can come up with a bit more grant money, but that’s probably not going to be enough. He may have to get a real job…like former Pitch reporter Steve Vockrodt almost had to before the Star rescued him from the real world.
It’s a jungle out there
the base of dare is growingold. To the youngrock listeners he’s old hat…old trick.
He’s probably one of the most successful jocks in kc history (dick andjay/lawrence/
mike murphy etc) buthis audience is getting older withhim. And they probably don’t want to go out to bfe in kck to hear some rockmusic when the prices for good groups
are out of sight.
But 30K is still a lot of people for a local station to draw…regardless Dare has been great in kc…guy is one of the funniest people in kc…draws thousands
of listeners….his advertisers love him….I think he’s a riot.
A riot?
Yeah, I can see how you would find sophomoric humor – fart and titty jokes – to your liking.
His audience is getting older, but the event itself is no long merely a reflection of Dare.
It’s about the bands and the event itself…the bottom line being, they’ve probably been fibbing about the crowd size all along and somebody at the racetrack messed up and let the actual crowd size cat out of the bag
Actually measuring of an event’s crowd size is impossible unless you’ve got a turnstile device to count each person that enters the venue. Outside of that, the only other way is to publish the amount of tickets sold to the event. And that won’t really be a true representation of people who actually showed up.
Since it is a ticketed event and the entry into the grounds is pretty secure, my bet is they know how many people are there.
Especially at the Speedway.
Promoters – especially radio stations and the like – like nothing more than to inflate crowd numbers to make the events larger than life and more newsworthy.
My hunch again is the reviewer asked someone with the venue and they slipped up and gave them an accurate number.
Hearne,
The only way I can think of is if the ticket scanners at the gate were counting at the same time.
maybe check his numbers…gets 35-44 women….
so they fib the crowd size…so does glazo and everyone else
in the ticket biz.
Rememeber the comets…now they were goood at feathering
a house.
But who cares. The 30k probably loved the show and the talent
and that’s all that matters.
were there 50K? can’t say…..but I know that jazzoo is dying.
It used to be “the” event of the year….tuxedos/beauitiful dresses/finest food/great entertainment and now it’s just a
shadow of it’s past.
Guess traditional events are dying. With you tube they don’t have to go to rockfest to see these groups….they’re on the you
tube channel…their whole shows.
sorry …without dare….the rock is nothing…….
98.9 is dying a slow death. They haven’t changed with the times and play the same songs they were playing back in 1992. Their focus should be on new music and up and coming bands, and not the Stone Temple Pilots, Rob Zombie, Metallica, etc unless they have a brand new album out. And then just play their latest stuff. If I want “classic rock” I’ll turn on 101 The Fox. I seldom listen to The Rock anymore. I can tune into better stations via the internet. KILO out of Colorado Springs CO is a real good one.
Funny how what goes around comes around…
Thinking back to the days when The Rock ate KY102’s lunch.
That said, I remember like 15 years ago one of The Rock’s departing deejays bagged on the station for playing to much classic rock!
Dare’s not much older than a lot of his morning competition, which is often comparably old-fangled. The gray-haired grouches on 810’s border patrol and 610’s Bullfrog Fesco come across like they were the inspiration for that old bum who beats up all the teenagers on YouTube Red’s “Cobra Kai” series. All too often, the 20th Century needs to stay in the dead-and-buried place that it inhabits.