The Fringe Director Jon Morgan has announced his resignation.
Jon Morgan who has only been the Fringe Director for just over a year, has today resigned over
the ten percent drop in ticket sales compounded by the computer booking fiasco. His
departure is sad, but honourable, he is going back to his great love producing
and presenting great theatre, in which I am sure we all wish him well. We would
hope that the Fringe IT and website development team would also fall on their
sword, since they created the problem in the first place. Many times in this
festival we were told by countless shows that that the ticket buying public
were told by the Fringe website that the show was sold out, when this was not
the case, this was not the direct fault of the Fringe Director, but of the
software development team. Jon Morgan's only sin would appear to be, believing
what he was told by web designers et al, and authorising the implementation of
an untried system. Hopefully the independent review of the box office
will show this and other reasons, like the fact that people were booking tickets through the venue websites rather than the Fringe website could have affected the figures, as well as the appalling weather having played its part.
Good luck Jon, many people will be sad at your departure, we all believed you had so much more to give the Fringe. John Ritchie, Editor