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Park City Institute’s Locals Live Stream ends due to lack of funds

Park88, a husband-and-wife duo featuring Rich Wyman and Lisa Needham, were one of the local acts to perform for the Park City Institute’s Local’s Live Streaming series.
Photo by Mickey Deneher

For a few months during the COVID-19 shutdown, Park City Institute presented the Locals Live streaming concert series every Saturday night.

Unfortunately for the nonprofit, the series came to an end after resources ran out and viewers declined to donate to keep it going, according to Park City Institute Executive Director Ari Ioannides.

“We did have sponsors for three of them, but no one donated after that, during any of the remaining shows,” Ioannides said. “I get it, though. People are used to seeing that kind of content for free. I mean if people can watch a Pink Floyd concert for free, why would they want to pay to watch the live streams that we present.”



Park City Institute originally planned to introduce the live streams during live mini performances in the Park City High School Black Box Theater, Ioannides said.

“We wanted to present sort of a family event where people could bring their kids to a concert at a very low cost,” he said. “The plan was to also tape the show and archive it for later, but when the school district didn’t want us in the building, we scrambled and did them out of private homes.”



Producing the live streams from these homes still cost money.

“We used our own cameras, our own sound system and did the mixing and editing in-house,” Ioannides said. “Even then, it cost about $3,500 to produce the show, and while the artists were excited to work with us, we really needed to pay these artists. So, without sponsorships, we just couldn’t keep it going.”

Still, viewer numbers, which were nearly double the amount of seats in the Eccles Center for the Performing Arts, impressed Ioannides.

“We had almost 3,000 people watch the live streams,” he said. “We really enjoyed doing the series.”


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