The economic climate puts a spotlight on the "non-profits."

Ooohhhh, it's getting nippy out there now.

Skirmishes between the non-profit vs. profit producers started last year, as cries of "Not fair! Not fair!" were heard from many profiteers who raged that productions like South Pacific were unfair competition, since they were designed without the need to be solely dependent on ticket sales.

My take has been that they are more than welcome to come to the club . . . but if they're getting a reduced cover charge (with unions, creatives, the government), then so should we . . .  especially with some of the exec. pay that's going around.

We talked about this a long time ago, but Philip Boroff went public with it yesterday in an article on Bloomberg.com that is sure to set off a lot of folks, especially with timely buzz words like "excess" being tossed around.

As it should.

I'll reiterate what I said in my previous post.  Get paid as much as you can, guys and dolls.  I'm not on your board.  But don't complain that you have it tougher than the rest of us and deserve a bigger break.

In fact, one of my readers just told me he got a call from one of these theaters recently asking for a donation because they were facing a "budgetary shortfall."

The truth is?  We all have it tough.  And why the commercial producers get the bad guy rep while the NY non-profits look like Angels in American theater, I'll never understand.

You don't see any commercial producers buying any theaters in the last few years, do you?  Yet how many non-profits have?

Watch out NPs.  It's not the CPs you have to worry about making a fuss.  It's the unions and creatives. 

Because when they read articles like Philip's, they're going to start comparing the size of their paychecks to yours.

And, well . . . it does matter.