Much at Stake for Coming Grammys
At the Grammy Awards later this month, nominees like Carlos Santana and teen pop star Britney Spears won’t be the only ones holding their breath.
That’s because executives at the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and Staples Center have a lot riding on the music award show’s first foray into L.A.’s newest arena.
Officials with NARAS and Staples have been working together since the arena’s design phase to make the venue suitable for a major awards show. With millions of eyes across the globe watching on television and the Internet, plus twice the attendance of previous years, the pressure is on to make this year’s awards show the biggest and best ever.
“Whenever you go into a new venue, there are risks,” said Kathy Schloessman, president of the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission. “NARAS has got a multimillion-dollar television deal with CBS. Ratings they generate directly translate into dollars that NARAS gets back. If you have a bad year, a bad rating, it’s going to affect what you can generate next year.”
Money is especially significant this year. Production costs will be 30 percent or more above the show’s usual cost, about $6 million to $7 million. Yet that investment pales next to the time already spent planning.
“You have to go back to the beginning, when we first caught wind that they were considering building an arena,” said Michael Greene, president and chief executive of NARAS. “We made contact with pretty much everyone we could find who was in any way related to this, to talk to them about making sure things worked from a television production and sound perspective.”
The move to an arena was a long time coming, Greene added. The academy’s membership is now more than 14,000, up from 7,500 in 1995. After allotting seats to nominees, entourages, guests and record-company executives, few tickets remained in recent years for paying members.
The organization has alternated holding the Grammys in New York’s Radio City Music Hall and L.A.’s Shrine Auditorium, but ventured into the Big Apple’s Madison Square Garden in 1997. The Garden accommodated more guests and provided far more room than the other venues, but some complained that the show lacked intimacy and the arena simply wasn’t built to accommodate an awards show.
Based on lessons learned by the academy and recommendations from other organizations, Staples Center architects went to work.
“We designed Staples to overcome some of the production and intimacy problems traditionally associated with arenas,” said Lee Zeidman, vice president of Staples Center operations.
Dealing with acoustics
The arena bought retractable seating for flexibility in using different sets and staging areas. Designers moved loading docks to provide more direct access to the arena floor, and added additional entrances for a faster set-up time as well as two “elephant doors” large enough to allow sets to be brought in without taking them apart. Grammy officials suggested ideas for lighting, sound, and even where elevators should be located in relation to where they envisioned stationing the press.
The willingness by Staples officials to make design adjustments led to a momentous first: “We contracted to do the Grammys there before the arena was even completed,” Greene said.
But even months of planning couldn’t prepare Staples and Grammy officials for their biggest challenge. The arena’s acoustics touted as state-of-the-art were publicly panned after the Bruce Springsteen concerts, the first public shows at the center, in October.
“Those acoustical issues were not the fault of the building,” Zeidman said. “That group did not bring in what it takes to play an arena of this magnitude. For every touring act, we sat down with them and said, ‘It’s a big building and you need certain (equipment).'”
Even so, engineers have been working since then to improve sound quality. Officials say the sound will be vastly improved for the Grammys, set to air Feb. 23 on CBS.
“We’ve had several major acoustical audio meetings down there and have put together a unique new sound reinforcement system that has never been done before,” Greene said.
The academy will install a high-tech system that adjusts sound frequency to compensate for differing volumes, such as whether a performer is singing or a presenter is talking, and will add 13 speaker clusters to the arena floor. To limit reverberations and enhance sound quality, Staples Center will spend $100,000 to acoustically treat the exposed concrete in the bowl with a cushion-like material, Zeidman said.
“We tested it during the Eagles (concert on New Year’s Eve), and it sounded great,” he said.
Keeping everyone happy
Just as for the academy, the stakes are high for Staples Center.
“They definitely want to attract events of this magnitude in the future,” Schloessman said. “And you have everyone in the music industry watching. These are the people who run the concerts that you want to bring in.”
The arena also wants to keep the holders of luxury suites happy. Suite holders already have paid in the range of $300,000 a year for the right to use the boxes, but there are two events that they’re still excluded from: the Grammys and the Democratic National Convention.
Suite holders do have the privilege, however, of renting suites for the Grammys for an additional charge of $17,500 for the night. Because of staging, only about 120 of the 180 suites can be used, meaning that suite holders won’t necessarily get to use their own suites. More than half of suite holders have responded, said Brenda Tinnen, vice president of event and guest services for Staples Center.
The arena had only a few suites still available last week, Tinnen said. The remainder will go to insiders at both Staples and NARAS, and their families; Tinnen wouldn’t reveal whether these people would be charged for using them.
Revenue from suite rentals will be split between the academy and the arena, with the academy’s portion going toward the Grammy Foundation, a nonprofit arts education group. Staples officials declined to comment on the financial arrangement.
Economic impact
Last year, the Grammys pumped about $25 million into the local economy, according to the Sports and Entertainment Commission. That amount is expected to increase this year because Staples Center will seat 12,000 guests, compared with only 6,000 at the Shrine or Radio City Music Hall.
“It’s not necessarily that the economic impact doubles, but there’s more parties and more people spending money,” said Schloessman. “The Grammys pump money in, but what we also get, which is harder to quantify, is exposure and publicity. It really helps tourism.”
The awards show’s organizers aren’t thinking about long-term impact at this point, just one week before the Grammys take over Staples Center and two weeks before the big event. Tackling logistical issues is weighing foremost on their minds.
For the first time, the Grammys set will include three stages, allowing for more musical performances. The set will cost more than $1.5 million. About 100 local union workers will do the 10-day set-up, construction and de-construction.
After the three-hour awards show ends at about 8 p.m. on Feb. 23, Zeidman said, “An army of people will march in and take that place apart, because we’ve got to be ready for Laker practice at 10 a.m. on the 25th.”
About 500 part-time arena employees, the same number needed for a sold-out concert, will staff the event. NARAS crew will handle camera, sound and other technical work, as well as provide escorts for artists.
“Given that this is a live TV broadcast, we’re using some different protocol,” Tinnen said. “We’ll do some additional training a week out so everyone knows what to expect, when to expect it, and what the protocol is.
“The Grammys have a very involved arrival process (for guests),” she added. “It’s a very elaborate plan with very specific details. We’ll need to inform our staff so they can direct people to the appropriate places, it’s not the normal process and routing for an event.”
Despite the months even years of planning, challenges remain.
“The thing that remains the biggest challenge for us has to do with the media area,” Greene said. “We’re shown in 200 countries, we’ve got one of the biggest media crews that comes to any TV event, and we still just don’t have enough room to shoehorn all those folks in.”
The arena’s Team L.A. store will become a press hub. The 11th Street entrance will be transformed into an elaborate arrivals area, allowing entertainment media separate stations for interviews and pre-shows and costing NARAS in the low six figures.
For Staples crew, the challenges are more technical.
“We have to physically remove about 600 permanent seats in order for the Grammys to get their set in,” Zeidman said. “Taking them out is one thing, but storing them and getting them put back in is another issue.”
Both sides agree that they expect the results to reflect the effort. But no matter what happens, Zeidman said planning for the music awards is good practice.
“This is going to be a good test for the Democratic Convention,” he said.
