Battle of the Bills

If you are lucky enough to get to see a Broadway show this month you may notice that the Playbills look a little different and that is because Playbill is celebrating their 140th anniversary! A Playbill for those who don’t know is a program you are handed when you walk in to take your seat in a theater. Within the wrap-around section of a Playbill, you can find photos and biographies of the cast, authors, composers, and production staff. In a Playbill you can also find a list of scenes/songs and their performers, the time of intermission or if there isn’t one, a short description about the era in which the show is set, and a “At this theater” section. 

Playbills have an iconic look with the words “PLAYBILL” written out in bold black against a bright yellow banner. Below the word Playbill, you can also find the theater where the show you’re watching is. This banner is consistent on every Playbill that you will find on Broadway. The only exception is every June Playbill changes out their yellow background for a rainbow one to show their support for Pride month. There have been 3 versions of the rainbow banner so far. Besides that, there have only been a few changes to the banner and those changes are made for special occasions. Some examples include turning the banner green for the 10th anniversary of Wicked or turning it black for the 25th anniversary of Chicago. Below this banner, you will find the show’s graphic or picture (This is normally a show’s “logo” or marketing picture). These graphics or pictures are specific to each show and are the biggest thing you see on a Playbill. This is how a Playbill you would get today would look like but this is just one version of a long evolution of Playbill’s.

Because October is the 140th anniversary of Playbill, Playbill has teamed up with every Broadway show to come up with 4 new designs each looking like how a regular Playbill would during that time. To showcase Playbill’s and Boradway’s many eras. The first Playbill style that they are printing is one inspired by the play “Merrily We Roll Along” and was used in the 30s and 40s. The next Playbill style they are printing is inspired by “Damn Yankees” and was used in the 50s. The next design was inspired by “Mame” and was used in the 60s. The last era they made a design for was the 70s, which was inspired by “A Little Night Music”. Because these are special edition Playbills they have the “regular” cover of the Playbill or the cover that will be used again once October passes right behind the legacy one. In every Playbill for October, they also have an article explaining these Legacy covers. The only other time a show’s playbill’s cover has been redesigned in any way was in 2015 and that was only for select shows. So this is a very rare and exciting event. 

With such a big celebration of Playbill’s history, you may be wondering just how Playbill came to be. The first Playbill was printed for the Madison Square Theatre in 1884 and was only 4 pages long. An Ohio businessman named Frank Vance Strauss saw the rich audiences entering the Madison Square Theatre and wanted to capitalize on it so he made his program for the Madison Square Theatre for free. Strauss was the first person to put ads in his programs and he chose many different types of ads to be run in his theater program. Soon, the little leaflet turned into a full magazine. The magazine then started to print articles about important topics and trends of the time. The magazine underwent many names, many of which were the names of Broadway theaters such as The New Amsterdam or the Winter Garden, before finally settling on Playbill in 1934. For the next 20 years, Strauss’s magazines grew in popularity and were a regular sight in theaters. By the end of the 30s, they were printing 16 million Playbill’s. 

With that many Playbill’s being printed it’s not surprising that other companies would want to get in on the action. So while Playbill was being used in New York in Broadway and off-broadway houses like the Majestic Theatre or the St. James Theatre,  another rival publication named Stagebill, was getting comfortable in Chicago, Washington D.C., and New York City arts venues like Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. While Playbill had some concerns about Stagebill, the two bills stayed in the respected areas and did not cross any lines until the ’90s. In the 90s, Playbill’s CEO reached out to Lincoln Center and asked them to stop using Stagebills and start using Playbills. This would have been a huge deal for Playbill because it would open Playbill up to a whole different kind of audience but unfortunately Lincoln Center declined their deal. This was just the beginning of a fierce battle of the Bills. 

In 1995 a Playbill truck stopped at the Public theater to give them 5,000 dollars worth of Playbill’s, only to be told that the Public theater now uses Stagebill. The Public theater was very important to Stagebill as this was their first real standing in the New York Theatre market. In the 90s, New York looked very different than how it does now. In the 90s, 42nd Street was not the Broadway hotspot we know it as now. It was a mess and many of the theaters in that area were shut down because it was a bad area at the time. So once the city started to rebuild 42nd Street, it’s only right that they started to rebuild the theaters too. 

One of the most famous theaters on 42nd Street is the New Amsterdam, which is one of the oldest Broadway theaters still in use. Because New Amsterdam needed so much renovation to restore it to its former glory, it needed a big sponsor to do so, and that is where Disney stepped in. Disney, which was going through their own “renovation”, wanted to make connections with audiences besides just through a screen. So Disney and the New Amsterdam Theatre made a 99-year contract that Disney was to restore the New Amsterdam Theater in exchange for a venue to host all Disney shows. Disney pulled it off, and The New Amsterdam has new life in it. With this new renovation and the recent hits Disney was having like Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, Playbill wanted to be distributed in New Amsterdam, but Stagebill beat them to it in 1997.  

Besides the battle between Playbill and Stagebill, some differences also separate the two bills. Playbills are constructed identically to other shows in the wraparound method; this method prints the same few pages for every Playbill that is used on Broadway and it is changed every month. These pages are also what the cover and back cover are printed on. On the inside of the wraparound, you will find pages showing information that pertains to the show specifically. This means that if you got two Playbill’s from two different shows in the same month, they would all have the same few pages with the same ads, same restaurant guides, etc. before you see the information about the show.

This is very different from how Stagebill lays out its programs. In a Stagebill every piece of information you find in it is specific to the show. So every article you find will be about what you are about to see, unlike Playbill. Another difference between the two bills is that Playbill does not have control over the ads that show up in their programs while Stagebill does. This is why Stagebill appealed to Disney and the New Amsterdam Theatre instead of Playbill because when using Stagebill, Disney doesn’t have to worry about alcohol and cigarette ads showing up in the programs for their family-friendly shows. 

In a shocking twist to this war, just a month after “Beauty and the Beast” opened on Broadway using Stagebills, the CEO of Stagebill joined Playbill’s staff. This was a wise decision because besides the obvious victories of Playbill with theaters. Stagebill was going downhill and Stagebill’s owner had put them on the market claiming that they were “too niche”. Stagebill’s next target they sought out in the battle of the bills was the new Ford Center Theatre. Ford chose to work with Stagebill instead of Playbill because they didn’t want any other car dealerships being advertised in their theater. So they chose Stagebill so that they could control the ads. At this point, it seemed like Stagebill made the most sense because it factors into the user’s experience more in terms of topics they would like to read and hear about. The only area Stagebill was failing in the user experience was the price because it’s much cheaper to print a Playbill where parts of it are the same than to print unique Stagebills for every show. 

With Stagebill having the upper hand Playbill fired a sneak attack with an “additional service” launching the Showbill. The Showbill was created by Playbill and was the first time in a Playbill that owners could have full say over what is printed in the program. So instead of the same articles in every Playbill, the articles were made specific to the company that purchased them or to the show. This was the first and only time that Playbill would have programs that were specific to each show. The reason that they had to change their name from Playbill to Showbill to do this is so that they could work around advertisers. The Showbill was created so that if an advertiser comes to a show and they are handed a Showbill they can’t get mad that their ad is not being advertised because they paid for it to be advertised in a Playbill, not a Showbill. While Showbill’s were a great solution to the Stagebill problem, they were expensive. It costs a theater 1,300 dollars a week to print Showbills as opposed to the free Playbill. The Ford Center Theatre used Showbill regularly before Showbill reverted to Playbill. Playbill also has bills all around the country in places like Los Angeles and San Francisco. 

To make sure that Stagebill stayed in their corner, Playbill signed a deal to print 65,000 Playbills a month for the Shubert Theatre in Chicago (Stagebill’s home turf). Playbill’s next attack was creating Playbill’s classic arts program which was created to get the arts venues like Lincoln Center and the metropolitan opera away from Stagebill for good.  In 2001, Disney chose not to renew their contract with Stagebill and replaced them with Playbills. This erased Stagebill’s presence on Broadway. After their removal from Broadway, Stagebill tried to buy two performing arts magazines to get back on the market. After this, Stagebill’s territory and cash reserves shrank, closing down their contracts with Chicago theaters because they couldn’t afford to print programs for those theaters anymore. Carnegie Hall, a loyal Stagebill theater defected to Playbill, And eventually, Stagebill, a 70-year-old company, was beaten out and went bankrupt and their rights were acquired by Playbill. 

The reason that this battle was so intense is because Playbills are not just a program you throw away on your way out, they are souvenirs that are a memory from a moment in time that has passed and that you will never have again. Playbills also connect audiences and generations. A quote from Mr. Jorgensen explains how Playbill connects audiences. “Playbill can be a way to connect audience members who are seeing a different cast perform the same set of roles. Take Wicked for example, it’s been running for 20 years and people keep coming back again and again to see different performers’ takes on Elphaba and Galinda. The Playbill gives each audience member a snapshot of that show during that time so they can compare experiences and remember that special moment.” While Playbills connect audiences they also connect generations. With these special edition Playbills, it is wild to think that you are holding the same type of program that someone in the 1930s would be holding. Playbills give us a conversation starter and information but above all else, they connect us because everyone in the theater has a Playbill. So the next time you are handed a Playbill, think about how it was almost a Stagebill. 

Graphic by Noa Nyguard using Canva