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Dateline: 26th August, 2007
New Town Fringe Problems Although ticket sales from the Edinburgh Fringe central box office are up 20% on last year, and venues such as the Traverse, the Underbelly, the Gilded Balloon and the Zoo are also reporting higher than usual ticket sales, the Assembly is on course to make its first loss for seven years, according to William Burdett Coutts, the venue's director. The Assembly has eight venues, mainly in the New Town, and a total of 700,000 tickets to sell, but, as Burdett Coutts told The Scotsman, the cost of producing 25 of its own shows, a dearth of American visitors in Edinburgh this year, and weak audiences even for four-star shows were all to blame for the poor returns. In contrast, venue operators in the Old Town, such as the Underbelly, and to the south of Princes Street generally, are very happy with this year's returns and many have remarked that the centre of the Fringe seems to have moved to Bristo Square and George Square, the home of the Pleasance Dome, the Gilded Balloon, the Udderbelly and the Spiegeltent. This has prompted new Fringe Director Jon Morgan to have talks with the city council about how to a revive a "sense of destination" for the New Town. "I think it's important that different parts of the city are all equal. I would be interested in creating more of a sense of involvement in the New Town," he told The Scotsman. It should be pointed out that the Fringe Box Office sales may be artificially high because, due to problems with a new computer system, the venue had to route all its internet sales through the Fringe system. Edinburgh GeographyThe New Town is so-called because it was new when it was built, but it should more properly be called the Georgian Town. It is to the north of Princes Street, the city's main street. The Old Town is the area around Castlehill, the Lawnmarket, High Street and Canongate, the so-called Royal Mile which runs from the Castle in the North to Holyrood Palace and the new Parliament in the south. It is the original Edinburgh. Also south of Princes Street is Southside, which includes Nicholson Street and the Pleasance, as well as Bristo Square, which is almost all part of the University of Edinburgh, and George IV Bridge, which runs parallel to Nicholson Street.
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