From Yahoo! news:
A showdown devoid of holiday cheer loomed Thursday at Radio City Music Hall, where management said its annual "Christmas Spectacular" would go forward with recorded music while the union for striking musicians instructed its members to show up for work.
Of course, a strike is a union weapon meant to impose "costs" on their employers. If successful, the union can disrupt the employer's revenue flow, so one question is "how will consumers respond?" Another question is "how will other unionized workers who have a hand in productions respond?" Apparently the Rockettes are planning to perform:
The union-represented Rockettes planned to perform since there was no picket line to cross, according to their union, the American Guild of Variety Artists. The Rockettes reached a contract agreement with Radio City Entertainment last month.
A few years ago, a walkout shut down many broadway shows, but an earlier strike was met with taped music.
More than a dozen Broadway musicals went dark in March 2003 for four days after the musicians' union walked out, and theaters lost millions of dollars in revenue. But when the union struck the New York City Ballet in 2000, performances of "The Nutcracker" went on as scheduled with taped music.
I did a little searching via Google to find out what type of crowd the ballet had in 2000, if the Ballet had given customers a break on ticket prices, and how the taped music was received. I imagine that something has to be lost with taped music, but if people are willing to pay for canned music to the Can-Can, then the musicians' union may not get what they hoped.