The next time your press department swings into action for opening night, give careful thought to how those tickets are allocated. If you have marginalized or eliminated bloggers from your comp list, you may want to reconsider.

Across the land, empty seats are yawning back at theater management. As good as your show is, people won't see it if they don't know about it. There is so much competition for the entertainment dollar, particularly today, that every means at your disposal, including, and especially the blogger, is important to getting the word out.

The world's changed: people are interested in getting better information faster and from different sources. They want a sense that their information is straight-up - not diluted or massaged - and not tied to the corporate mission statement.

Many people don't read the newspaper. Even if they do consult a newspaper's website, it is so loaded with content you'd need a roadmap to locate a show review. Newspaper posts by critics generate, if they're lucky, a couple of comments.

Try finding arts reviews in the paper. If and when you find one, it's skimpy. In the pecking order it's way down there: politics, sports, style (read: celebrities), even the obituaries are consulted before the arts.

A different perspective is presented by bloggers. Newspaper critics are cut from the same cloth, while bloggers vary widely, generating more and better threads!

Blogs are interactive. People feel connected to them as they might a social networking site. The potential future (young) audience, which is vast, all surf the net and text message for information and to keep in touch.

Bloggers are committed - they believe passionately in what they do and that enthusiasm and sense of purpose is conveyed to the reader. Even if you've no room for them at the opening (in my view a mistake), ensure that you include them later in the run when perhaps waning or competing interests or tepid reviews might have slowed down sales. Sometimes it takes a while for a show to get going, and initial criticism often leads to corrections and better performances. Let bloggers point the way to your doors.

Bloggers are the Pied Pipers of Modern Media - they're ready, willing, and able to march this young crowd, who love to go out, into your better land of live entertainment. You only have to recognize this and let them. And do give them your undivided attention.