but our accountants just delivered some distressing news. it appears that clicks are down, that eyeballs are vanishing and concession sales have dropped through the floor. according to the bean counters there aren’t nearly as much of you here today as there were yesterday. plus, if the current trend continues, there won’t be nearly as many of you looking up dates for u2 and the rolling stones tomorrow, either.

in other words, we have to start economizing.

but where to start? listing concert schedules for bands like 3 doors down and artists like elvis costello and paul mccartney costs money. it takes cold hard cash to link the pearl jam dates with the venues, to sort the dates for journey and to spell check the arena names for the eagles. we’re already a lean, mean, tour-date machine, but apparently that isn’t good enough. we have to find more than nine ways to skin the cat.

so we held an emergency meeting. we gathered all the department heads together, including the department managers for font development, chronological sciences and punctuation maintenance. we discussed possible budget cuts, such as reducing electrical consumption, flush expenditures and malt beverage lubricants, so that we might lower the cost of bringing you fresh schedules, like the itineraries for jimmy buffett and alanis morissette, each and every day.

and you know what? cutting back is hard, if not downright impossible. after all, when you consider the federal concert commission and all their silly rules regarding how to list tour routings, it’s virtually impossible to cut back on the cost of listing concert calendars for mark knopfler, maroon 5 and hilary duff. but if we don’t follow the fcc’s rules and regs, they’ll revoke our license, take away our hard-earned bandwidth and give it to someone else. someone who can list the dates for reel big fish and loggins & messina at a fraction of the cost that we shell out every day in order to ensure that you and yours receive total tour date satisfaction.

but cut back, we must. for the writing is on the wall, and the accountants have spoken. profits are down, expenses are up and viagara costs have gone through the roof. for years we’ve prided ourselves on having the most up-to-date, state-of-the-art, third-party concert web site in the tour date business, and now we must look for areas that might lend themselves to self-sacrifice. like cutting back on employee benefits, such as pensions, 401s and malt liquor mondays. yeah, we have to bite the bullet, cut expenses to the bone and starve the beast that is the pollstar.com expenditures department. that is, if we’re going to continue to bring you schedules for jethro tull, the everly brothers and green day.

but what to do?

well, for starters, we’re going to stop using upper case letters. after all, all that screen space costs money.

and if that doesn’t work, we’re going to take a long hard look at implementing a shorter calendar year. we’ll keep you posted.