"There's no profit like nonprofit"

Ouverture, originally uploaded by Dr Feelgood ®.

That's a quote from Shubert theater chair Gerald Schoenfeld, and it's key to Bloomberg's Jeremy Girard take on the capitalist vs. nonprofit conflict latent in this year's Tony Awards:

This year more than ever before, the nominations, announced May 13, favor narrow-focus, small-scale shows over high-volume Broadway glitz. The awards -- which will be broadcast by CBS on Sunday evening, June 15 -- pit private investors who have staked $15 million or more for a new musical or $2 million or more for a new play against publicly subsidized companies that don't pay taxes, get major breaks in union costs and have flop insurance in the form of thousands of discounted, presold seats.

I'm immersed in other things for a couple days, so for now I'll just recommend that you read the whole thing, which builds to an impassioned argument for expanding the Awards--also, by the way, a nonprofit enterprise--to include off-Broadway shows.

(On a related front--again, alas, time constrained--I haven't checked out the Tony Awards licensing arrangements, but the Oscars have, IIRC, historically yielded the Academy over 50 million a year tax free. More on that eventually, promise.)