Money & Ads
Spring break was an industry before it was a controversy: package operators, promoters, sponsorships, and towns that budgeted for a March that paid for the year. It was also a media product, and the most lucrative version of that product was the filming of young women, the record here is the corporate and legal one, including the prosecutions of the man who built the largest of those businesses.
Part of Spring Break
10 moments in this segment.
- - The ad breaks of Spring Break 86. The commercials recorded off MTV's 1986 Spring Break broadcast. The advertising is the clearest evidence of who was paying for the beach to be on television and which brands wanted the audience.
- - A promoter tries to remake Black College Reunion. WESH reports on Daytona Beach promoter TC Copeland's proposal to relaunch Black College Reunion under a new, race-neutral name after attendance fell again. The pitch is argued entirely in terms of tourism dollars for the city.
- - Cheaper trips in a bad year. A 2009 report on students cutting the cost of the trip during the downturn, trading down on packages and travel while keeping the season itself. The recession shows up in the budgets rather than in the attendance.
- - Spending less on Miami Beach. An Associated Press report from March 2009 finds spring breakers on Miami Beach cutting costs during the financial crisis while businesses discount to pull them in. The season's economics tracked the wider downturn.
- - Korine explains Spring Breakers at Venice. Harmony Korine discusses Spring Breakers at the 69th Venice International Film Festival, where the film premiered in 2012. The film turned the ritual into feature-length fiction and remains its best-known screen treatment.
- - A beach with a sponsor. A Rio Grande Valley station covers the promotional campaign built around Coca-Cola Beach at South Padre Island ahead of the 2013 season. It shows how far branded partnerships had moved into the marketing of spring break itself.
- - The bill for keeping breakers away. Two years after Panama City Beach restricted drinking on the sand, businesses that had built themselves around the season told the evening news the ordinances had gone too far. Some in the community were openly rethinking the decision.
- - Counting on a season after Hurricane Harvey. Hotels and rental properties in Port Aransas were still closed months after Hurricane Harvey, leaving Padre Island operators unsure how much spring break trade would reach them in 2018. The report shows how completely these coastal businesses are built around a few weeks of the year.
- - Florida weighs the cost of a lost season. Days before the beaches closed, Florida had declared a state of emergency and tourism officials were assessing what the coronavirus would do to a spring break season much of the state's coastal economy depends on.
- - Corpus Christi counts on the break. The head of Visit Corpus Christi tells a local station why the Coastal Bend expects spring break to lift its economy, crediting the weather above everything else. Host cities on the Texas coast treated the season as a revenue event rather than a nuisance.
