I’ve know about "Drag Time" probably since the first Drag Show I had ever attended. By now I can’t remember exactly if it was at Boyztown or at Detour that I saw this show, but I can tell you for certain it happened a good 15 minutes to half an hour late.

Drag Time is something that a lot of us accept as just a fact of life when it comes to Drag Shows, and sometimes other community events that actually have nothing to do with Drag Queens. Sometimes we can’t even count on an event happening at all, though we can practically always count on it being late when it does.

Steve and I, who often have to run between several events in one night, encounter this all the time. Sometimes we end up missing later events because the earlier ones start late, and that’s not fair. From the results of our 2011 Reader Survey, it appears that we’re not the only ones who are downright sick of this.

Now, I can understand the reasoning behind trying to get people to stay longer in the bar – in most cases they will take the opportunity to drink more. So starting a show late, or keeping the actual starting time vague can, in theory, have its advantages for the venue. However, that doesn’t help when the delaying has gotten so bad that many people have stopped going out at altogether.

In our survey we tried to gauge how readers respond to vague event times by asking, "How do you feel about attending events that don’t list a specific starting time?" While venues may hope people will show up earlier to be safe, it turns out this is only the case for 20% of our respondents. Meanwhile 43% will show up later than the time they guess the event will start, and 37% won’t bother showing up at all.

So we can say, fairly conclusively, that venues aren’t doing themselves any favours by keeping event times vague. Of course, what fascinates me more is the reason why this is the case. I had been pondering this for a little while, but when I recently attended a seminar on effective meetings as part of my day job, something clicked.

Yes, I realize there is a big difference between going to a meeting and going out to a bar or community event. At the very least, the former is formal, while the latter is casual. But we live in Alberta where a lot of people in the LGBT community are business professionals who value our time. If someone is late for a meeting, or monopolizes our time for a considerable amount longer than we had planned, it is not only a hassle – it is disrespectful. Many of us plan our time, even when we are out for recreation, and taking us off schedule is not often appreciated.

In the seminar, one of the strongest things that they encouraged was to start and end meetings on time. Start it even if all expected attendees have not arrived yet, because when you hold off, you waste the time of the people who did arrive on time. For those who didn’t, you make them realize that they need to take your schedule seriously.

Ending it on time is just as important. People have other things to do, and going beyond the planned ending time can cause everyone who stays to be late, or force them to skip out on things in progress. Either way, this makes people unhappy.

You may think this doesn’t apply to what happens in the night scene, because patrons are out for fun and have no place they need to be in any rush; that, other than on Sunday, they have the whole next day to recover from a hangover and catch up on sleep.

Wrong. For one, people have jobs that may require them to work over the weekends. At the very least, they plan to be in bed at a certain time, in order to allow themselves to get enough sleep to be functional at work the next day. They’ve probably learned their limits, not wanting to repeat past hellish experiences getting through the day tired or hung over, perhaps even worried that they might get fired for not performing their best.

When you take this control away from them, one of two things happen: they leave on time, whether the event is finished or not, and feel dissatisfied; or they stay until the event finishes, get to bed late, and regret attending the event as they drag themselves around the next day – or worse, lose their job for it.

Who in their right mind would keep coming back for something that is supposed to be fun, but always leaves them feeling bad one way or another? So then, is it really such a surprise that fewer people go out any more?

Another thing that I find fascinating is how things might have gotten to this point. So as an exercise, let’s imagine that there was once a time where all events posted a time, and started exactly on time; a satisfactory number of patrons showed up in time to experience the event. Patrons went home afterwards, having had a great time with no regrets, event organizers accomplished what they set out to do, and the venues were prosperous.

In an imperfect world, there any number of things that could have started this to go off track. Perhaps a VIP was delayed arriving due to unforeseen circumstances, and the organizers opted to wait a few minutes to allow them to arrive; perhaps a critical performer in the show was likewise delayed, and the show could not begin until they were ready; perhaps organizers had not adequately promoted the event and were not seeing the turnout that they had expected, so decided to wait in hopes of latecomers arriving; perhaps the event was not long enough to keep patrons engaged for the venue to prosper, and so it became necessary to implement a strategy to keep patrons there longer. All of these things are innocent enough, and entirely understandable (to be nice, I won’t go into any of the more sordid scenarios that I can think of).

At first, the event is delayed by 5 or 10 minutes out of necessity. The organizers are anxious about this, but they realize it’s not the end of the world, the patrons find a way to keep themselves occupied, the venue perhaps makes a few more sales to pass the time. Nevertheless, the patrons and even the performers notice that starting late can be alright, and being busy people not wanting to stand around for an extra 5 to 10 minutes if they can help it, plan to arrive 5 to 10 minutes later the next time.

Pretty soon we start seeing the exact same things happening that originally made them late, except now with the acceptable 5 to 10 minutes delay tagged on. So out of necessity once again, the event is delayed 15 to 20 minutes; on the next cycle 25 minutes to half an hour; fairly soon 45 minutes to an hour. Patrons who showed up on time now feel bored, even cheated – they came here to see a show, and instead they’re standing around waiting. It puts them in an unhappy mindset before the show even starts and makes them less likely to enjoy it. Some have already given up and left, others have given up and choose to continue socializing instead of paying attention to the originally scheduled event. Organizers realize there is a limit to how much they can delay, and take measures to keep the delay within tolerance. This pushes them back in the direction of being on time, but not far enough. Every person has their own threshold, so there continues to be patrons who leave unhappy.

The natural thing to do when one is unhappy, is to express that emotion in some way that solves the problem for them individually, or at the very least they seek understanding from others. So those unhappy people start showing up late themselves, or give up coming. By talking to other people about it, others may likewise show up late on their first time, or avoid coming at all. This begins to compound the problem of turnouts, and of the venue prospering, pushing back in the direction of delaying. Venues and organizers may push harder promoting their events and not see the results they were hoping for – sure people are seeing it, but if they are already unhappy with the event, or the organizer, or the venue, an ad isn’t likely to convince them to give it another chance.

This cycle can go on for a long time but, with a loss of entropy it cannot go on forever. As more and more people become unhappy, they stop coming out and find other ways of keeping themselves happy. As viable patrons diminish, the venues begin fighting each other for them, leading to a sometimes poisonous environment that in itself can cause patrons dissatisfaction and drive them away. Soon everything breaks down: venues go out of business and people have to find a new hangout, or fall out of the habit of coming out altogether so that even the surviving venues continue to struggle and suffer.

After some time, people start to feel lonely at home. They may be unhappy with the lack of pretext for social contact with their friends; they are itching to get out of the house, meet new friends or, merely get laid. Someone with the resources to open a new bar recognizes this demand and acts on it. However, the news reaches only a fraction of the people who no longer go out – the rest have grown so isolated from the scene that they have no awareness of it any more.

Things are good for a while. But the community is small, and those same event organizers who haven’t learned their lesson, recognize the success of the new venue, believing this might be the only ingredient they need to complete their winning formula. And so they hold their event at the new venue, delay, cause patrons to feel unhappy again, and watch things spiral downwards.

So, my question is, how can we fix this?

The answer, I’m afraid, is with great difficulty. There is a lot of broken trust that takes time and consistency to repair – time and consistency that organizers and venues may not see as worthwhile in the short run. But here are my recommendations nonetheless.

First, start on time and end on time. Of course, you cannot do this without the logical precursor of first establishing what "on time" is. Always list a starting and ending time in your promotional material, and stick to it! To keep true to this promise, you may need to make tough decisions and sacrifices. If a performer is late, for instance, find a way to start on time without them. If it’s an honest one-off mistake, you may want to work them in after they do arrive; otherwise, cut them out of it (even if it takes away from the show) so that they learn to respect the schedule. Once they realize they cannot benefit from performing in the show unless they are on time, they have motivation to prepare themselves earlier in future.

When it comes to dealing with turnouts that are below your expectations, remember the old adage, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." (The gay translation might be, "A cock in the hand is worth two in the tush.") Your first priority is to keep the people that do show up, happy – latecomers be damned. If you keep the audience that you do have happy, they are more likely to keep coming back and bring others the next time, and your crowds will grow (if not, you may need to look at addressing the formula of the show itself). Late comers who turn up during the show will realize they need to plan better next time. Really late comers who arrive after the show has finished, will have a room full of happy people to inform them of what they missed.

If the venue feels that the show is not long enough to keep people there so that they can be successful, a technique often used is to list a "doors open"/"cocktails" time as well as a "show time". Find some way to make it worthwhile for patrons to show up early, like prizes, food, or other forms of entertainment. Another thing of value to patrons might be a post-show reception after the ending time, where patrons can opt to stay and mingle with the performers – mention it explicitly so that they can plan for it. Do this consistently for several cycles of your event, and you are likely to see people coming out earlier and staying longer.

Finally, event organizers need to get over whatever frail egos they may have, and take a realistic look at what things work well, and what things don’t. If they truly don’t understand why they aren’t getting the response they expected, then they need to understand why. There is always a reason. To do this, they need to stop snubbing the people who don’t show up, the people who leave dissatisfied, even the people who criticise them directly. Instead they need to ask why, and what they could have reasonably done to make it worthwhile; consider it, and act to improve on their event.

So in conclusion, drag time is no longer a cute excuse that warrants a "drag queens will be drag queens" shrug. It’s disrespectful to the people who come out to see a show, and it’s destructive to the venues that host. No time is just as bad, if not more likely to set patrons up for disappointment.

It is high time to stop wasting people’s time and return to a way of doing things that can make organizers, performers, venues, patrons – everyone – happy again.

This section of my publisher’s column grew so long that we decided to split it off into its own article. Read it on page 26.

Suffice it to say, I had a "fun" time crunching numbers from our Reader Survey and other sources in order to update our 2011 Media Kit. Thankfully it is something we only need to update once a year.

Our Media Kit is a booklet of information that lists our ad prices, publishing deadlines, reader demographics, and other information that helps advertisers get a sense of who we are as a magazine, and who we reach for readers. The difficult part of providing detailed, accurate, and well-founded information is, of course, the upkeep. Despite our best efforts we ended up completing this project a bit later than we had hoped, however I am pleased to announce now that this information is available from the Advertising section of our website.

Part of the delay came from a new initiative this year that we have released at the same time as the new Media Kits: the GC&E Magazine - Community Wall Calendar. Mainly this is intended as a resource for businesses, to help them with planning around major community events throughout the year (not to mention keeping on top of our publishing deadlines).

Many businesses will be receiving a free copy of this calendar over the next month, however if you want to ensure that your business is on our list, or if you feel you may need more than one, please contact us – we’ll be happy to arrange it for you.

An electronic PDF of the Media Kit and Calendar are available for download from the Advertising section of our website – click the "Media Kit 2011" link in the left-hand sidebar:

http://www.gaycalgary.com/advertise

We have already received requests from individuals who want calendars of their own, and we will look at how to handle these requests once we have produced enough to satisfy our list of local businesses. If you don’t want to wait, however, you’re more than welcome to retrieve the calendar from our website and print it for yourself.

Some highlights from January 2011 were:

• OUTtv held a launch party for Season 3 of RuPaul’s Drag Race here in Calgary at Club Sapien. Season 2 winner, Tyra Sanchez, was in attendance and performed two numbers to a busy Friday house. Read the interview with Tyra on page 54.

• The Imperial Sovereign Court of the Wild Rose, Edmonton’s Imperial Court, braved treacherous highway conditions (okay, they said it wasn’t that bad) to put on an amazing show at the Twisted Element. It was a tribute to the television show Glee, that included a backdrop, costumes, a big variety of performers, choreographed group numbers – all set to hit songs from the Glee soundtrack. If you missed this for the crappy weather, then pooh on you.

• The Calgary Eagle held their launch party for Straight to Diva, where we met two of the three contestants. They are related – stepfather and stepson – so this should be an interesting competition.

• At the ARGRA Dance on January 29th, Calgary’s own Big Rock Brewery was announced as the new Title sponsor of the 2011 Rodeo.

Coming up this month:

• The Calgary Eagle celebrates their 9th Anniversary on Saturday, February 12th.

• Team Edmonton is holding their annual mixer on Saturday, February 26th. See their ad for more details.

• The main event for Straight to Diva is coming up this February 20th. Don’t forget to buy your tickets. Proceeds from this event go to HIV Peer Support and the AIDS Calgary HEAT program.