Paying, and Paying Again

According to the imaginative new math of Clear Channel Entertainment, the controlling interest in the nation’s $1.6-billion concert industry, and Ticketmaster, its main ticket peddler, this 50-cent newspaper should be adding an $8.85 convenience fee for having it delivered to wherever you got it. Plus a $3.25 facility fee for needing a building to publish in. Plus another $3.50 in handling charges because someone had to handle the newspaper before it got into your hands. Plus a universal hidden $3.50 fee for parking that you didn’t use but someone might. Add paper costs, plus the price of railroad shipping (and new hats for the engineers). Then there’s an ink fee (the stuff that comes off on your fingers isn’t free, you know). Photo assessments. Recycling charges. Headline surcharges. Editorial writers’ bonuses. The way we figure, you should be paying somewhere around $35 for this daily newspaper (slightly higher west of the 405 and if this issue contains a Jennifer Lopez photo).

Which is still cheaper than the actual cost of a $20 face-value concert ticket. That’s music to the ears of concert controllers and an unmitigated economic cacophony for hard-working music lovers who could own some CDs for that much money. Such markups make even the $8.95 shipping on a $19.95 late-night TV gizmo seem reasonable.

How’d this happen? According to Jeff Leeds’ Times story last week, the Justice Department decided in 1995 not to file antitrust charges against Ticketmaster. This apparently sounded like carte blanche for fee increases. Ticket sales for the top 50 tours are down 15% this year. But with ticket face values increasing 73% in recent years and some fee markups of 116% piled on top of that, the Clear Channel conglomerate had enough money to buy almost every concert venue (135 worldwide so far) and radio station (over 1,200 already) within earshot. Little competition remains to control fees; it’s as if one airline owned the airports too.

Here’s an idea: Try a nice matinee movie. Or a book.