KCPT pulls plug on TV Dinner

Color it history…

After nine years – the last two disastrous – KCPT Channel 19 is pulling the plug on the station’s single biggest and most high profile fundraiser, the black-tie TV Dinner.

“I wanted to let you know that I talked with Pattie Broderick at KCPT yesterday and they have decided not to do TV Dinner this year,” reads an e-mail from K.C. Originals secretary Katherine Halstead to members of the local independent restaurant group that provides food for TV Dinner.

“They feel that the economy hasn’t recovered enough and they want to give it a rest for a year. They do want to stay in partnership with the Originals and they are doing an ad in Savor.”

Think of it as a third ugly installment on KCPT’s once bright dream…

To fashion the swankest, hippest black-tie fundraising fandango in all of Kansas City. Thus was born the cleverly named event. And for six solid years, the local public television station delivered the goods atop the Liberty Memorial’s outdoor deck under picture perfect weather. The station attracted a Who’s Who of local movers and shakers with national acts like the Neville Brothers, Los Lobos and Three Dog Night.

Where TV Dinner started to go south?

A couple of years back when the station began to cut back by booking local bands to headline and flying in glorified cover bands from Nevada. Then Mother Nature intervened and took Channel 19’s seventh edition of TV Dinner to the woodshed in 2008.

“We regret to inform you that the 2008 TV Dinner event has been canceled due to the current weather conditions and the prediction for lightning and increased storms this evening…” read a blurb on the station’s Web site the morning of the event.

“KCPT was prepared to host the event, even in the case of rain, but predictions for thunderstorms and lightning caused us to make the safety of our guests, sponsors and vendors the No. 1 priority,” the Web site continued. “In addition, the consecutive days of rain leading up to the event have made the grounds around the Liberty Memorial deck unnegotiable by cars, equipment or people.”

The awful truth, however, was that for seven straight years KCPT had produced the high-dollar, high-risk outdoors affair sans rain insurance, an alternate indoor location or a make-good rain date.

The cancellation hung hundreds of Kansas Citians - $150 per ticket holders – out to dry with no make-good event or refund option. Further, the Originals were stuck with thousands of dollars of excess prepared food.

The Originals’ difficulties were then compounded last year when the TV Dinner was lightly attended and they were not warned in advance.

“I just heard from KCPT and they are now expecting 1,150 people,” Halstead e-mailed restaurants the day before the event.

“We had more than half of what we took out there left over,” Jardine’s owner Beena Brandsgard told KC Confidential last year. “You know, we had a lot of leftovers, it was a waste. These are tough times and having that much food left over was not very nice. They told us there would be 1,000 or more people there and we didn’t want to run out. I don’t know how many people they had, but maybe there were 500 people there – maybe.”

The $64 million question: Can TV Dinner really mount a comeback after three straight years of severe disappointments?

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (1)

Write comment