Ticket uproar prompts live airing of ‘Quest’

With tickets for Friday night’s “Quest for the Best” selling out literally within minutes of going on sale Monday morning, complaints started rolling in almost as quickly.
In response to the outcry, “Quest” co-ordinator Pearl Pidlubny announced yesterday afternoon that Videon (Channel 9) would be broadcasting the event live from 7-10:30 p.m.
“This year, because of the complaints, we’re going to let Videon run it live,” she noted.
Normally, Channel 9 recorded “Quest” and aired it at a later date so as not to detract from ticket sales. But due to the tremendous public response for tickets this year, the Little Amik Winter Carnival committee reconsidered the policy to accommodate the complaints.
Community programmer Chuck Croker, who first pitched the idea to Pidlubny yesterday morning, was pleased to hear the decision.
“A live broadcast shouldn’t be much more trouble than the recorded one,” he noted.
The maximum seating capacity upstairs at Memorial Arena is 300. But only 125 of the $12 tickets were available to the general public Monday morning (75 at the Chamber of Commerce office and 50 at the Fort Frances Public Library).
Those were snapped up within 10 minutes.
The other 175 tickets had been pre-sold–60 to sponsors, 35 to committee members, and 80 to the contestants–a standard practice at previous “Quests.”
Although Chamber co-ordinator Dawn Booth said some see this “inside buying” as a questionable practice, she felt the opportunity to let those actually involved in the event get first crack at tickets was only fair.
“When you consider all the work that goes into putting this, and the winter carnival on, it’s the least we can do,” she noted. “We still have to pay like everyone else.”
Pidlubny confirmed only the performers themselves (who paid a $20 entry fee) and the volunteers who help out at the event, would not have to pay to get in.