Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
Bringing together local businesses and neighbor of the Tri-Cities region. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Skip Mauney helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around The Tri-Cities.
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Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
EP# 77: Exploring the Evolution of the Paramount Bristol: Mark Andrews' Odyssey in Theater and Radio
What makes Mark Andrews with Paramount Bristol a good neighbor?
Discover the colorful history behind the Paramount Bristol with our special guest, Mark Andrews, the marketing maestro responsible for transforming this iconic theater. In this engaging episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast, Mark takes us on a journey through the fascinating evolution of the Paramount from a 1931 movie house to its current status as a thriving arts and concert venue. Along the way, Mark shares his own story of how a friend's request led him into the world of theater management, where he now juggles the challenges of booking shows and managing performances. Get ready to debunk some common myths about old theaters and gain insight into the backstage secrets of the entertainment industry.
Outside his professional life, Mark is a man of many talents and passions. His love for darts has made him a proud member of the local dart league, the GTCDA, and he invites listeners to join the fun. Additionally, Mark brings his infectious enthusiasm to the airwaves as the morning show host at WTFM Radio, drawing from an impressive 32-year career in radio. Balancing these roles with aplomb, Mark offers his wisdom for anyone looking to engage with their community, be it through joining a local league or catching a show at the Paramount. Tune in to hear Mark's vibrant tales and insightful advice, and get inspired to explore the arts right in your neighborhood.
To learn more about Paramount Bristol go to:
Paramount Bristol
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Skip Monning.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. We have a very special guest with us here today, whom I am very excited to learn more about, and I'm sure you will as well. I have the pleasure of introducing your neighbor, mr Mark Andrews, who is the marketing director for the Paramount Bristol, Mark.
Speaker 3:welcome to the show. Thanks, Skip.
Speaker 2:Pleasure to be here. Glad to have you. Hope you're having a good day.
Speaker 3:It's a great day and it's about to get better.
Speaker 2:There we go. Well, we're very excited to learn all about you and the Paramount. So, if you don't mind, why don't you start us off by telling us a little bit about your business?
Speaker 3:Well, the Paramount was built here in 1931, and actually Paramount Pictures purchased or rented the building, leased the building and they ran movies out of here for 50 years. They signed a 50-year lease with the city and they ran movies out of here for 50 years. They signed a 50-year lease with the city and in 1981, they decided they'd had enough. That was about the time that the cinemas started taking over and the multiplexes and those things. So Paramount started closing down all of their theaters they're solo theaters, as we all know and within the next 10 years the city had decided, since nobody wanted it, they were going to tear it down and make a parking garage out of it. And some ladies here in town said nope and raised millions of dollars to renovate it and reopen it. And it opened up as an arts center for the arts and it gradually kind of graduated into a concert venue and now we do both.
Speaker 2:Very cool. So how did you get into this business?
Speaker 3:An old friend of mine was the interim executive director about three and a half years ago and asked me if I would come and help her do a few things run the production side of things and also help with booking shows and I said yes, why not? So here I am.
Speaker 2:Very cool. So what are some myths or misconceptions about old theaters that have been converted into performance halls and theaters?
Speaker 3:Well, a lot goes into, first of all, converting. There's a big difference between arts and concerts. A lot of times arts are local and they require a lot of stage space. Some concerts do, but not many concerts, especially the concerts that we book here. So sometimes the arts is a little more of a difficult show to put on. There's a lot more involved with it a lot of times. And also one of the questions that I get more often than not is when we have an artist, please tell me that artist is nice. Please tell me they were nice to everybody. And without naming names, I will say that there are some artists that are very difficult to deal with, some that are not, but a lot of times the artists that you think will be nice and assume that they are nice aren't always nice, and it's a little disappointing when that happens wow, well, hopefully not like a.
Speaker 3:They require brown m&ms or anything no, it's not quite that bad, but close, sometimes it's close but close.
Speaker 2:I understand well, uh, mark. Outside of work, what do you do for fun?
Speaker 3:I actually do a couple of things. I am in a local dart league here, which, by the way, if anybody wants to play darts, the GTCDA. They have a Facebook page. We have a Facebook page. You can join. It's a good time to join, as a matter of fact, getting ready to start a new season. And then the other thing I do is I am the new morning guy at WTFM Radio. I've been doing the morning show now for about two and a half months. I did radio for 32 years before coming to the Paramount and I was lucky enough to be invited by the folks at Holston Valley Broadcasting to do the morning show and I'm loving it. So I'm now pulling double duty podcasting to do the morning show, and I'm loving it.
Speaker 2:So I'm now pulling double duty, working two jobs and loving both of them. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. It's hard to get one job that you really enjoyed it, but they have to. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm lucky.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Let's switch gears. Can you describe a hardship or a life challenge that you overcame and made you stronger when you came out the other way, the other side?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, as a matter of fact it's related to the radio.
Speaker 3:So in the in the mid to late eighties I was designing billboard signs in Myrtle beach and was making pretty good money a little better than 40 grand a year and I accidentally got involved with radio after Hurricane Hugo came through in 89. And they offered me a full-time job on the morning show and they offered me $11,000 a year, and so I had to. I had to decide what I was going to do. If I was going, I knew that I loved radio and I knew that I wanted to do it. But I didn't know if I could afford to do it. And uh, after uh, uh, a conversation, a very inspirational conversation with my dad, uh, I decided that I would leap into radio and suffer the financial hardships that I knew I was going to suffer, and it took about five years to start making more money than I was making with the billboard sign company. But I worked really hard. It was something that I really wanted to do and I struggled for a long time, but it was well worth it.
Speaker 2:Awesome, great story. Doing what you love that's what's important. So, mark, if there was one thing that you would want our listeners to remember about the Paramount Bristol, what would that be?
Speaker 3:Well, I would say something that's somewhat surprising to a lot of people when I talk to them is that we don't set the ticket prices for our shows, and I know that's difficult to understand so I'll kind of try to explain it. Many times we are given the structure that the ticket price structure by the artists. We have two types of shows here. We have shows that we book and shows that are rentals Our rentals. We have zero control over the ticket prices. We have no say-so, it's all them. They pay for the rental and everything else. They tell us what to do For the shows that we book.
Speaker 3:We are kind of handcuffed by the cost of the artist and people are wondering why concerts are so much more expensive than they used to be. Album sales are not making money anymore. Artists used to make the majority of their money from album sales and they're not selling albums as much anymore for a couple of reasons. The online streaming they don't make as much on that and people are pirating music. So the money's not there for the rate for the uh record sales. So they're making their money on their concerts. So artists are a lot more expensive and that cost, of course, uh that when it costs us, that's passed to everybody else. So that's the reason why we do have a little bit of wiggle room and we're working real hard on making our bottom tier of tickets more affordable, and I think we've done a pretty good job with that so far. So, but yeah, so if a show is too pricey for you, please don't blame us. It's not our fault.
Speaker 2:And come on out anyway and support. That's right, that's right, that's right. Well, how can our listeners that want to learn more about the Paramount, how can they get more information?
Speaker 3:Well, there are three ways. The easiest way is to go to our website. It's ParamountBristolorg. You can also call it's 423-278-7000. For 8920. And then our box office is open every weekday from noon until 6 pm, and we're also open the box office open on show nights as well, until the show starts, and then we shut it down. So three ways. But the easiest way is is the website, and we also have a facebook page. You can send us a message on that too very cool and you can get.
Speaker 2:Can you get tickets on the website?
Speaker 3:absolutely. That's the easiest way to get them. You can get an email to you. Electronic tickets are the easiest way, but please don't ever buy tickets from anybody other than us. We don't use Ticketmaster. We don't use any other avenues for selling tickets. If you buy a ticket elsewhere, there's a really good chance that it's a scam. There's a really good chance that it's a scam Understood Very good.
Speaker 2:Good advice too, all right. Well, mark, you don't know how much I appreciate you being on the show and appreciate what you do for the community with the Paramount, bringing culture to the area and making it a better place to live. So thank you for that and moving forward, we wish, we wish you and the Paramount Theater all the best well, thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on yes, sir, and hopefully we can have you back. Love it alright.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnptry-citiescom. That's gnptry-citiescom. That's gnptry-citiescom, or call 423-719-5873.