Swansong for music festival

Don Plant 2009-07-15 KELOWNA Daily Courier:
Expensive artists and low ticket sales have buried the Merritt Mountain Music Festival. Unless organizers can find a new investment partner, the 17-year-old country fest has twanged its last note, employees were told Sunday. Last weekend‘s attendance of 10,000 to 12,000 people fell short of the 18,000 that organizers needed to break even, festival spokesman Don Adams said Tuesday. “The economy has taken a hit. The Olympics are coming. There‘s only so much money to be spread around. When you commit to an act months ago, you‘re committed with the hopes you‘ll get (more) interest in tickets. When you don‘t, you‘re in a bad situation.” The financial load was too heavy for the company that ran the four-day festival, which has attracted Bill Ray Cyrus, Alan Jackson, Tim McGraw and other big names in country music. Organizers have had several setbacks, including a rained-out first year that put them in debt from the start. The challenge now is to pay out all 700 employees, said Adams. He‘s confident they‘ll get their cheques within a week. “It‘ll take some shuffling to get it done,” he said. “We‘re a mom-and-pop operation. We‘ve sustained it for 17 years. It‘s been very difficult. Unless we can find a good partner, we can‘t go next year.”
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J.P. Squire 2009-07-15 Kelowna Daily Courier:
Hydrofest drowns in sea of red ink
Jorum Schramm lost “tens of thousands” of dollars in his unsuccessful bid to promote Hydrofest 2009. So the president and CEO of Leverage Sports and Entertainment isn‘t sure if he will try again in 2010. “I don‘t know. When you fail at bringing back the races in an exhibition-style format, it‘s tough to think about what could happen next year. It was a tough grind this year, an uphill battle the whole way. There are people looking into it and we‘ll assess that situation,” he told a news conference Tuesday. Schramm hasn‘t done a personal tally, but said the effort cost him “a lot – we‘re talking tens of thousands and a year of my life to get the event to the state it is now. It‘s disappointing, but I don‘t have regrets about what I did.” The owners of unlimited hydroplanes, unlimited light hydroplanes and off-shore powerboats also expressed their disappointment, he said. “That, I think, is the greatest tragedy. The boat races are looking for different sites and the boat owners were genuinely excited about coming back. Kelowna is a beautiful location, everybody knows that. Everybody pushed, but it just wasn‘t meant to be this year,” Schramm said. He is not planning any other major events in the Okanagan or elsewhere.