Some theater people are shivering with fear that their jobs are about to disappear.
Unfortunately, they won't get much sympathy from anyone else on Broadway.
That's because they're newspaper drama critics, those once all-powerful arbiters who, with a vicious turn of phrase, could close a show, humiliate an actor, bankrupt an investor.
Now they're in danger of being shut down themselves, done in by declining circulation, shrinking arts coverage and that dreaded rival who's usurped their power, The Blogger.
"We're huddling in the corner going, 'What's going to become of us?' " says Michael Sommers, who took a buyout this week after 15 years in the aisle seat for New Jersey's The Star-Ledger.
Also leaving is Peter Filichia, the paper's New Jersey critic for more than a decade.
Eric Grode, a promising young critic, evaporated with the New York Sun a few weeks ago. Two other top New York newspaper drama critics are bracing themselves for a coming round of buyouts and layoffs.
Says Sommers: "The diadem is certainly sitting uneasily on the heads of the first-nighters."
What a comedown from what was once one of the most glamorous jobs in journalism.
Think of Addison DeWitt in "All About Eve" sipping wine at the Stork Club. Or Peregrine Devlin in "Theater of Blood" driving off to lunch with a young actress in his Bentley.
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