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1. Shaun Eli says:

   July 16, 2005 at 6:14 pm

   As an economist and comedian, I think I can see both sides of this issue.From an economic standpoint, one of the first things you learn in econ class is that supply and demand for workers may not intersect at full employment. In other words, just because someone is willing to work for a dollar doesn’t mean that there will always be a job. Of course the lower the wages, the more people get employed, because at some point it’s cheaper to give a one dollar employee a ten dollar rake than to buy a five hundred dollar leaf-blower and fill it with gasoline. If the guy gets ten dollars an hour, it may be cheaper to spend money on equipment so he can work faster and you don’t need as many workers.There are many ‘artificial’ factors that affect employment. Does a higher minimum wage lower employment? Maybe. But if it goes from five to eight dollars an hour, only those employees whose worth to the employer is less than eight dollars get fired. If adding an extra cashier at McD lets them serve more people and that cashier increases profits by ten dollars an hour, he’s hired. But if they can hire him for five dollars, that’s what he’s going to get paid. Probably not a lot of jobs are worth less than ten bucks to an employer, but the excess of workers allows employers to pay less. That’s why we have a minimum wage– because in theory it costs only a few jobs but helps a lot of people. Yes, the employer does make less money if you raise wages and there are arguments on both sides of this issue.But let’s move on and look at comedians. Jim Gaffigan’s name on the sign will draw more people than mine will so presumably he can ask for more money. That should work well in most cities– a big name may allow a club to charge more, or at least sell more tickets, so Jim makes more money than I do. And frankly they have to pay him decently because he’s probably not going to leave his NYC apartment to go to Hartford or Detroit for a one hour show for eighty dollars.In New York City that breaks down because there are a lot of Jim Gaffigans and they can walk or subway or taxi to a gig, and that gig is a showcase that gives them ten or twenty minutes. So they hire one Jim Gaffigan and then stick on a bunch of lower-level pros and amateurs. And the fewer pros they have in the show, the more money the club makes (at least until their audience starts saying “Hey, half of those guys weren’t very funny.” and stops coming). But as long as they can replace Jim Gaffigan with Judy Gold or Dave Attell or any of the fifty other comedians at that level, they can get away with paying less. Effectively the comedian becomes the one dollar guy with a rake. They have to pay only enough to get the comedian out of the apartment, and since we want to work to stay in practice and keep our names out there and try out new material in front of a paying audience, we’ll often work cheap.How do we fix this, if indeed we view it as a problem? Well, Broadway actors have solved that problem– they formed a union and negotiated a minimum wage. Based on the size of the theatre, actors get paid a certain amount of money. NYC actors are like comedians– there are way more actors than jobs, and probably there are hundreds or thousands of talented actors who’d take a starring role on Broadway for free. But the union prevents that. Does that raise the price of tickets? Probably. But the ticket price is more than just the cost of actors.Why is comedy different? Different audience, for one. The comedy club audience isn’t a tourist from Atlanta who came to NYC to shop and see five shows and the Statue of Liberty. It’s not a fifty year old doctor and his banker wife from Scarsdale who have a two hundred dollar dinner then see a show. Comedy club audiences are young and don’t usually have a lot of money. Go to a comedy club on a Saturday night and you’ll see a twenty five year old couple on a date, and the eighty dollars the night costs is a big deal to them– this is a big night out. Make that eighty dollars a hundred and ten and you may lose some of them to a movie theatre, a music club or even to an off-Broadway show.Secondly, putting on a play takes, well, first you need a play, then you need publicity because nobody’s heard of your new play, then you need sets, and probably the theatre will have to be dark for a time while you install these sets.A comedy show, unfortunately for some, requires only a bar to hang up a sign that says “Comedy Tonight” plus an inexpensive sound system and a few pieces of wood nailed together to be a stage. And while that bar may not have the reputation of a well-known comedy club nor even the full roster of Gaffigans, they will be able to attract some people to the show, even if they fill it with decent amateurs and get the talent for free.So– the wage issue– it’s not so much that The Comic Strip is competing with StandUpNY and Gotham for Gaffigans, they’re competing with Joe’s Bar Tuesday Night Comedy for the audience. And some of the audience may not know, or care, that the comedian at Joe’s has been doing comedy for a year. And that’s why, without some sort of bargaining, the Gaffigans of this world won’t make much money doing comedy in NYC.No, you haven’t lost your mind. If wages are forced up, the pro comics will make more money. But they will probably have fewer NYC spots if the clubs put on more amateurs in their place. And that will help some amateurs get good and turn pro faster, because you improve faster in front of a paying audience vs. doing open-mikes. But as pros they may have fewer spots. Or maybe not– it may turn out simply that clubs are able to raise their prices a dollar or two and pay more, and the clubs that have no or few amateurs on the roster may not want to increase the percentage of amateurs because they realize that they’ll start to lose more audience to Joe’s.Unfortunately we don’t get to know in advance what happens. We can bargain or legislate wages up and see how the employment market changes, or we can stick with what we’ve got.One more thing– I don’t know Tony Daro but from reading what you posted it doesn’t sound like he’s throwing the next Mitch Hedberg under a bus. In fact if wages go up, the number of spots for amateurs may not go up, but it won’t go down. Unless raising the wages forces some comedy clubs to fold…Keep up the good work,Shaun Elihttp://www.BrainChampagne.comBrain Champagne: Clever Comedy for the Smart Mind (sm)

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2. Jim Mendrinos says:

   July 18, 2005 at 5:54 am

   The economy of comedy is inseparably linked to the quality of comedians available to the market. The one factor that most people fail to figure into the equation is the fan factor – the fact that most clubs live and die by return customers. In order to keep those customers coming back we have to give them a healthy supply of name talent, and a good dose of emerging talent in order to keep thins fresh.The increased pay scale undeniably helps established comics. The bump in pay makes a passable weekend wage decent, and allows comics of a certain stature to avoid having to go on the road. Where I have issue is at the perception that it is the 94% that benefit, and the 6% that will be forced to struggle. The reality is it is the other way around.The majority of comics will receive less work as club owners look to maximize their value with established comics. It will take longer for newer comics to grow, and it will ultimately stagnate the market. While I want — and would do anything short of kill for a fair system of dealing with clubs, I’m afraid we haven’t gotten there yet.On the average I got a $15 per set on the weekend raise. Multiply that by 7 spots, 2 weekends a month and I have and I have an extra $2520 per year. A well deserved raise.However as I got my raise, I never got a definition of the passing process for most clubs, so most comics who don’t get paid can be kept in limbo longer. I never got a promise from a single club owner to scale back a 20 person bringer show, or the length of time a comic spends barking for spots, so I’ve left the new comic out in the cold for just a little while longer.I never got a firm agreement on how many “booked” shows vs. Bringer shows a club can have a week, so I fucked myself out of a whole bunch of weeknight spots where I could be developing material. I increased the average pay for each club by about &20k to $40k per year, so a few will fold in the next few months and years, cutting down on the available spots that I and the other 6% of the comics who got pay raises can chase. I’ve also forced a generation of young comics to work in crappier rooms, without the benefit of established comics available to mentor them, thus making not only the next generation a bit crappier, but the generations after that.I absolutely want, demand, and deserve more– but it goes beyond money. I want better rooms, better treatment for all comics, and a system in place where we can speak with club owners as business people, and not and beggars or loan sharks.I want a healthy comedy community.As for calling people “Open-Micers,” I don’t think a comic should ever say that disparagingly, after all, we all started out as one.

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