Public admission revenue at the Museum of Discovery rose unexpectedly in the first quarter of this year, due in part to late-night television appearances by staff member Kevin Delaney, an apparent swell of activity in the area and a proactive social media presence, museum officials said.
Receipts from the first three months are tracking more like those from 2013, the second year after the museum unveiled a newly renovated facility in the River Market District. the museum closed in April 2011 and reopened the following January with 90 new hands-on exhibits and a new 6,000-square-foot lobby with access off President Clinton Avenue.
The $9.2 million overhaul, funded by a grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, also marked the museum's transition from a collecting museum to a science center.
The first year after the museum reopened, revenue from public admission was $646,000, an all-time high that it hasn't seen since. The figures are for indirect sales -- people walking in the museum from off the street, said museum CEO Kelley Bass. The number does not include camps, school groups, birthday parties, member admission tickets and the like.
"Your first year of opening a new museum or opening a renovated museum will be the biggest year you ever have, and then you're going to start falling off each year thereafter," Bass said. "At some point you'll level back out ... you'll hit your plateau and that's where you'll be."
A decline in attendance following a blockbuster opening year "is an industry standard," said Diane LaFollette, executive director of the Mid America Science Museum in Hot Springs. She was the chief operations officer at the museum for a period that included the Little Rock science center's first year post-renovation. She said she used a formula from a consulting firm to predict the years following the re-opening.
Hard data on attendance trends at science centers like the museum were not readily available, though there is a belief that revenue from indirect ticket sales dwindle after the first year, said Christine Raffo, research and Web manager for the Association of Science-Technology Centers in Washington, D.C.
"I think that it's fairly typical for there to be a huge opening and some level of decline, but I don't know by how long and how much," Raffo said.
Receipts for public admission was between $200,000 and $250,000 in the three years leading up to the renovation. the museum moved to the River Market in 1998 from its former home at MacArthur Park.
Annual revenue dropped 20 percent to $516,000 in 2013, then slipped 11 percent year-over-year to $459,000 in 2014. This year, officials projected annual public admission dollars to be in the $400,000 range, down another 13 percent from last year. But actual attendance receipts in the first quarter of this year proved better than the same period last year and in line with 2013.
"We just blew the roof off compared to what we did in '14," Bass said. The museum projected $120,000 in public admission dollars for the quarter and actually took in $183,000.
Public admission revenue represents roughly a quarter of the museum's revenue stream, Edmond Hurst, the museum's board chairman, added.
An unseasonably stable January, a more aggressive Facebook strategy and a late 2014 appearance by Delaney on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon were contributing factors, Bass said. Ticket sales from unanticipated visitors spiked after shows with Delaney aired last May and again in November.
Delaney, the museum's director of visitor experience, was pegged to lead a science segment on Fallon's show in New York. He was in a segment that aired in May 2014 and another that was broadcast in November. The latter, which featured actress Lucy Liu, has garnered more than 2.6 million hits on YouTube. He's due back on the show this month.
"It's just like an up curve, and it's continued in '15," Bass said. "I just have to think the 'Kevin factor' has something, if not a lot, to do with it. It's raised the awareness level, made people more aware of the museum."
A former playwright and actor, Delaney conducts Awesome Science experiments for children and created the monthly Science After Dark program for adults. Since his first Tonight Show appearance last year, he's been chased by agents and producers trying to land him.
The 34-year-old, self-proclaimed "comedy nerd" has a good rapport with Fallon on the show. The host appears to be genuinely amazed at Delaney's science demonstrations. On the show and in person, Delaney comes off as self-effacing. Compliments are plentiful.
"I get a lot of folks wanting to thank me for representing Arkansas in a positive way," Delaney said.
Hurst sees and hears the ebb and flow of visitors to the museum, which is across the street and below his ninth-floor digs at Crews & Associates Investment Bankers.
"There are as many people as ever down here," he said. "You can just feel it ... that there's a lot of people in downtown Little Rock.
The museum's chief marketing officer, Kendall Thornton, has been publicizing the museum through social media. The number of Facebook "likes" and traffic are up significantly, Bass said. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts are routinely shared by other groups.
Hurst envisions public admission revenue will top the $400,000 projected.
Said Bass, "How long this wave will last we don't know, but we're doing all we can to make that longer versus shorter."
SundayMonday Business on 05/11/2015