Drawing People to the Fair

Drawing People to the Fair. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. It is county fair season around the country and one thing that local fair coordinators have to contend with is keeping attendance numbers up and that can mean sometimes thinking outside the traditional fair model. Lori Lancaster is the manager for the Benton-Franklin County Fair and Rodeo who has brought in a new and very non-traditional event to this years fair. Knights in shining armor! LANCASTER: Part of the fair's mission is entertainment and every year on Tuesday night in the arena we try to do something different. We've tried motocross, we've had tractor pulls so we've done a lot of motor sports. This year we have Knights of the Realm and it's basically the kind of show you'd see in Las Vegas at Excalibur with jousting and sword fighting and horses and castles and all kinds of fun stuff. Well I guess to be quite honest most county fairs owe their tradition to the medieval fairs of the distant past. LANCASTER: And the castle is going to be 60 feet tall, it should be kind of a spectacle you know something different, something that hasn't been brought to town before. You know there's lots of monster trucks and all that around at other venues and we were looking for something to kind of add a new flavor to the mix. Keeping the attendance up has been a problem in the past for many county fairs and with dwindling attendance the money coming through the gate is often down. Most county fairs are dependant on the county government, but the Benton-Franklin fair is a bit different. LANCASTER: We're not a county or state funded fair. We're a 501c3 organization so our finances are not tied to the woes of the state financial crisis. It's still quite a rare thing. It's the Puyallup Fair, the Benton-Franklin Fair and I think there's one other one in the whole state that are non-profits. It used to be a challenge to be in that situation and now it's sort of a blessing given the stat of the economy in the State of Washington. The King County fair in Enumclaw, Washington was forced to severely cut back on their high end entertainment and there was no carnival either due to budget problems. They tried to swing the fair back into a more nostalgic event with local entertainers and more focus on the 4-H and farm programs. The big name entertainment has changed a lot over the years as well and according to Lancaster in an area like Kennewick, Washington they have seen a definite shift from country acts to more classic rock and pop acts. LANCASTER: The country acts you know we've gotten some really good country acts in here and they're not as quick to sell out. I mean the demographic in the Tri-Cities and the base of our population, their age all kinds of things kind of fit into that classic rock category. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.