NEW YORK >> The Radio City Rockettes have owned Christmastime for more than eight decades. But repeated attempts to create a second Rockettes franchise show for warm-weather months have not gone smoothly, and the latest effort — a big-budget, multiweek “spectacular” that had been postponed until 2018 — is no longer in the works, people involved with the production said this week.

The struggle to turn precision dance and kick lines into lucrative rites of spring and summer — akin to the Rockettes’ “Christmas Spectacular” — goes back years and at one point featured now-disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein in a pivotal role. Once a source of great excitement, such efforts have become an enduring challenge for the Madison Square Garden Co., which manages the Rockettes.

Executives there torpedoed a new Rockettes show in 2014 and then mounted expensive “spectaculars” in 2015 and 2016 that drew scorn from many critics. A 2017 “spectacular” was postponed in February for a year, and the company instead made money by renting Radio City Music Hall this year to big draws like Dave Chappelle.

Such lucrative rentals continue to hold strong appeal for James L. Dolan, executive chairman of the Madison Square Garden Co., but he and other leaders still want another franchise for the Rockettes that rivals the popularity of the Christmas show, according to executives at the company and people close to the Rockettes. The current idea is for a Rockettes show that can be easily mounted, then packed up, then remounted — thereby providing flexibility so the company can make room for limited profit-making runs by the starry likes of Chappelle.

David O’Connor, the company’s chief executive officer, said in a statement Wednesday: “We are actively reconceiving the show to take advantage of our technology investments in Radio City which allow us to further enhance the production as well as to more nimbly bring the show in and out to accommodate other events.”

Devising a new annual entertainment tradition in an era when people have so many options, however, has bedeviled producers across fields like theater, circus, art and concert festivals.

“The ‘Christmas Spectacular’ is spectacularly successful, but a strong part of its pull is nostalgia and tradition,” said Drew Hodges, founder of SpotCo Advertising, who worked on Rockettes projects in the past, and is now an independent consultant for producers of live entertainment. “It’s difficult to build a new tradition — it takes years — and even harder to create a family-friendly entertainment that fills 6,000 seats a night,” referring to the seating capacity at Radio City Music Hall.

Time would seem to have run out for this coming spring. None of the behind-the-scenes work needed to mount a major new production is taking place, and this month the Tony Awards said it would return to Radio City on June 10, all but precluding a late-spring show as well.

Rhonda Malkin, a dance coach who has trained dozens of Rockettes, noted that the company has tried and failed to create various shows for the group over the last 15 years. She admired the most recent iteration of the late-spring show, overseen by choreographer Mia Michaels, and said that Rockettes were excited to perform it again.

“Radio City tends to build a big show and then at the last minute either do away with it or change it or not put it up,” Malkin said.

For years now, Madison Square Garden Co. has faltered in its artistic choices for a new Rockettes franchise — a creative development process that started becoming bumpy in 2014 because of Weinstein, the film mogul who was fired as co-chairman of The Weinstein Co. this month amid allegations of sexual harassment and assault.

That year, Weinstein played a key role in the decision to scrap a multimillion-dollar new springtime Rockettes show, “Heart and Lights.” He did not have an official role on the production, but attended a run-through with his friend Dolan, and was among those voicing doubts about the show’s book and songs. The show was canceled, and its creative team was soon gone, including Linda Haberman, respected artistic director of the Rockettes since 2006.

The following year Weinstein was brought onboard to overhaul the show and serve as its producer. He remade it and brought on a raft of stars, but it was not a success: Reviewing it in The New York Times, Charles Isherwood praised the Rockettes but little else, describing the show as a “numbingly overblown 90-minute infomercial.”

Another shake-up was ordered for 2016. Weinstein was no longer its producer, Michaels became its new director and choreographer, and playwright Douglas Carter Beane wrote a new script. But that version was not a success either. A Madison Square Garden Co. earnings report issued for the fourth quarter of 2016 said that it took in less revenue “due to fewer scheduled performances, a result of a shift in the timing of the production’s run from the spring to the summer, and, to a lesser extent, lower per-show revenue.”

Last winter there were indications that another overhaul was in the works. After a number of Rockettes expressed concerns about performing at the inauguration of President Donald Trump, Marie Claire magazine published leaked remarks that Dolan made to a group of the dancers.

“I don’t believe it’s going to hurt the brand,” the magazine quoted him as saying. “And nobody is more concerned about that than the guy sitting in this chair. I’m about to spend $50 million remounting this summer show. I’m going to spend a similar amount remounting next year’s Christmas show. I gotta sell tickets.”

But in February the Madison Square Garden Co. announced that it would not be going forward with its 2017 show by Michaels after all. It said it would take “a one-year hiatus,” adding that “we remain committed to the production and look forward to the show’s return in 2018.”

Several Rockettes had been eager to return to Michaels’ show, according to Malkin. The show was expected to include a mix of precision dancing and other choreography that was different from the Christmastime production.

“As a former Rockette and dancer, I thought it was refreshing to see the Rockettes do a different style and do it so incredibly well with the precision aspect in tact,” Malkin said. “But in terms of where the audience as a whole is coming from, I guess they were expecting more of what they see for Christmas.”

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