I picked up Jackson Browne tickets over the weekend. Actually, I was able to buy mine Friday, the day before they went on sale, because someone sent me the “pre-sale” purchase code.

I chose the $60 seats and bought two in the loge. I used the Omaha Performing Arts Web site, which was pretty easy to navigate and even offers a view of the seating so you can get an idea of where your seats are located.

With service charges the total was $136, or $6 per ticket in additional fees. Not bad, I thought. Had this been Ticketmaster how much do you think the tickets would have cost? I’m guessing close to $180.

TM would have added at least $24 per ticket in service fees and then, of course, there is the fee to print the tickets on your own printer, somewhere around $8 usually.

The Omaha Performing Arts Web site allowed me to click on and reserve a variety of seats: loge, floor or upper balcony, and then I was allowed to delete my unwanted choices before moving on to finalize my purchase.

With Ticketmaster you are unable to view where your seats may be, that is unless you’re willing to sacrifice the seats that the computer interface has automatically selected for you, while you research the venue Web site’s seating chart.

Sure, you can open another browser, or tab if you’re a Firefox user, and head to the venue Web site, but take too long and you’ll lose the seats in your TM web page.

We all hate Ticketmaster, yet like so many other corporations we are forced to do business with today, we just take it, essentially letting another conglomerate screw us, because our government continues to take away choice by rubber-stamping business mergers and financial takeovers.

There’s been a lot of coverage about the proposed merger of Ticket Master, the largest ticket service in the U.S., with Live Nation, an extremely large entertainment company that owns many large arenas and theaters, its own ticketing service and holds a equity stake in the careers of everyone from Madonna (the largest grossing tour of 2008) to Jay-Z to U2.

Unfortunately, there has been little real examination of the issue because most journalists are lazy and generate stories simply from headlines and never really understand what really is going on to provide insight.

Oddly enough, both of these companies were actually contractual business partners just a year ago, but ended their relationship when Front Line Management honcho Irving Azoff (manager of Eagles, G N’ R, etc.) bought Ticketmaster and because Live Nation wanted to start their own ticket service. But Live Nation’s ticket service turned out to be a bust. Which is why they now want Ticketmaster back. By buying it.

So, the two companies would now be involved in artist management, arena/theater/venue ownership AND the largest ticket provider in the country.

We already know that most of the best seats are never offered to the general public through Ticket Master because they are “re-sold” on higher priced resellers like TM’s own Tickets Now or through the local scalp houses that somehow manage to acquire all the best seats.
And those exorbitant service fees? Most of those are simply back door profits paid to the acts, promoters or venues under the guise of “service fees.”

It’s all one big bullsh*t ripoff and the price should be the price. And why can’t fans see an entire seating chart of available tix so everyone can visibly see that all the best seats are gone before the show even goes on sale?

Haven’t we had enough of corporations riding roughshod over the public? Teddy Roosevelt would never allow this merger and we shouldn’t either. Tell you congressman/woman to advise the FTC to say no to screwing the public anymore than they already are.