North American Midway Entertainment provided 65 rides for CNE’s midway.
When the board of directors of the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) in Toronto met in late October, GM David Bednar had two important pieces of news: the fair had its best attendance in 10 years, up more than 5 percent over 2013, and that after 16 years as head of the event, he will retire in the spring.
Attendance at the Aug.15-Sept.1 fair was 1.43 million, compared to1,359,000 in 2013.
“Those were my two big announcements, that we had our best fair in the last 10 years, due to a combination of factors,” Bednar said. “And the other announcement was of my retirement in something like six to eight months.”
Sixteen years after Bednar took over the fair, the event has a reserve of about $3.5 million ($3.1 million U.S.).
“If I remember, in 1998, we had 1.8 million come to the fair and we lost $2.2 million ($1.95 million U.S.),” he added, illustrating that attendance numbers do not tell the entire story.
Bednar attributes much of the success of this year’s CNE to the fact that fair officials conducted surveys and then reacted to the results.
“We’ve done a lot of research around the experience of coming to the fair in the last seven, eight years, and we’ve gotten solid gains by acting on that research,” he added. “We’re heavy-duty into customer service training for employees and we’ve been adding color and a better look to the fair.”
That includes a program that brought in 100 Adirondack chairs – or, as they are called in Canada, Muskoka chairs – and had them decorated by school children, giving fairgoers a colorful place to relax.
“And we’ve done a lot of work in the pavilions to enhance the look and feel of them, with carpeting and planters and glow lights,” Bednar added.
In marketing, fair officials also have taken better care to match programming to the logical demographic.
“We’re getting more segmented in the way we market,” he said. “Four or five years ago, we might have been doing 15 radio commercials. Now we do 25 or 30. They all sound the same – they have our musical theme. But the content is always very specifically targeted to the listeners of that radio station. That’s just one example.”
CNE attendees enjoyed a mix of new and classic rides at the midway.
Bednar also cited the fair’s carnival provider, Farmland, Ind.-based North American Midway Entertainment (NAME), as contributing to the CNE’s success.
“North American has done an outstanding job,” he said. “We have not had anything resembling a ride incident in I don’t know how long. They are so good at what they do.”
NAME placed 65 rides on the midway, Bednar said, and Amy Girton, the carnival’s director of communications and media relations, said NAME set a new ride revenue record again, although she declined to release the amount.
“The new ride we featured this year was the Remix ride, which was hugely popular,” she added. “Our most popular, timeless rides are the Ferris wheel, the Polar Express, Wave Swinger and the Zipper.”
Bednar also noted that patrons enjoy taking the Sky Ride that carries them across the grounds.
“The Sky Ride is a perennial favorite,” he said. “It’s gentle, 42 feet above ground. It’s almost identical to a ski lift. You’re dangling as you ride and 1,100 feet later, you are dumped off. It’s a very popular ride and affords a nice view of the waterfront and the skyline of Toronto.”
Pay-one-price ride wristbands remained the same price, Bednar said, at $36 ($32) in advance and $38 ($34) at the gate.
Gate admission, however, did go up, Bednar said, from $16 ($14) to $18 ($16), although the advance ticket price of $12 ($10.65) remained the same.
Patrons did not complain, Bednar said, however, “I think they are voting with their feet. The advance was up. The real growth in attendance was on the advance and online.”
Another price adjustment saw the $5 ($4.43) after 5 p.m. price Monday through Thursday of the first two weeks of the fair rise to $6 ($5.32).
“We had a huge response to that program again this year,” Bednar said. “We didn’t hear people complaining about the $2 increase at the gate, but what we did see was people looking for alternate ways of buying tickets, which I think is a good sign. I interpret that as loyalty. If somebody makes the effort to go online and buy a ticket in advance, that to me says we’ve done a good sales job. We’ve convinced them it’s worth planning in advance.”
The CNE’s concert in the Bandshell, which accommodates about 10,000 fans, has grown in popularity, Bednar said. Artists that appeared in the concerts, which are free with the price of admission, included Jose Feliciano, April Wine, Down With Webster, Christopher Cross, Hanson and Tom Cochrane.
“Bandshell concerts have really come home for us the last three, four years,” Bednar said. “This has been a big thing for us. We managed to land the Beach Boys two years ago.”
And an appearance by Kailash Kher, a pop singer from India, was another nod to playing to the demographics of the CNE, one identified by the CNE as “ethnic adventure families.”
“We had a huge response to that,” Bednar said. “The South Asian community in Toronto is significant. In that instance it was a very targeted market effort and it really paid off.”
In another nod to the new type of upscale fairgoer, chef appearances also have become very big, Bednar said. This year, Canadian chef Michael Smith, who hosts shows on the Canadian Food Network, appeared at this year’s CNE.
The budget for the Bandshell acts is about $1 million ($886,000), Bednar said, while the CNE’s overall budget is $29 million ($25,740,000).
In addition to leaving the CNE in better financial shape than when he began, he also leaves the event free of the city of Toronto, a move a few years ago that allowed the fair to be more independent.
So far, with the CNE earning surpluses in each year since independence took place, the move has been a good one, but the CNE also will not have any help from the city to deal with future losses, either.
“The biggest factor and what convinced us that we could become independent was that we looked at the 10-year history and on a net basis, we had returned an average of half a million dollars to the city,” Bednar said. “To the city of Toronto, that is a rounding error, but to us, it’s a piece of marketing. It’s a significant reinvestment. So part of the plan is to reinvest in ourselves.”
David Bednar will be retiring from CNE this spring.
A native of Texas, Bednar moved to Quebec in 1970 to attend Bishop’s University. Bednar was a theater manager with Livent in Toronto when he was tapped for the GM position at the CNE. At the age of 62 and with nine grandchildren and a wife who also is retired, he decided the time had come to move on.
“I really have some things in my life I really want to get on with,” he said. “It was a difficult call. I could stay here another two, three, four, five years. The challenge never goes away. There is always plenty to do. But I decided for me, now is the time to hang it up.”
Brian Ashton, the president of the CNE board, said he soon would be calling a meeting of the CNE’s executive committee to figure out how to deal with Bednar's replacement.
“David will not be leaving until early spring, giving the board sufficient time to find his replacement,” Ashton said. “Since the CNE is only in its second full year of independence, selection of a new GM is critical to the future success of this iconic national institution.”
This year’s dates were the earliest possible, and next year’s dates will be the latest, Aug. 21-Sept. 7.
Interviewed for this article: David Bednar, (416) 263-3800; Amy Girton, (765) 509-1169; and Brian Ashton.