Earlier this evening, I wrote to BAM with this idea:

Has BAM ever considered filming performances and offering them online to watch for a fee (just like the Metropolitan Opera’s On-Demand program?)

I know there are huge challenges to the idea. It would be very expensive to set up and maintain. There are issues of performers’ copyrights and licenses. Also, you would not want to cannibalize sales to live shows.

But what a thrill it would be to be able to watch shows that I wanted to see but could not attend. I loved the 150th anniversary documentary not only for the history, but for the flashes of performance footage. That is something I would pay to see. You could offer the paid “on-demand” videos quite awhile after the live performances (6 months to a year) so as not to cut into live performance sales.

Or maybe you could do lectures “From the Archives” and have experts/performers speak and show performance footage. There’s a whole lot of BAM I have missed out on — both in the recent and the far distant past — and I’d pay a reasonable fee to catch up!

Please forward to management, and thank you in advance for considering my ideas.

Addendum for my blog readers: I would imagine those of you who live too far away from BAM to attend live performances (but who resonate with their programming) would also pay a reasonable fee to attend “virtual” performances or archival lectures as well. Am I right? (This goes for other cultural venues too, though I admit there might be drawbacks to my idea — at least for the venues — that I am not yet aware of.)