Take a look at the upcoming touring Broadway lineups at South Florida's three big performing arts centers. Even if you know squat about what equals a Broadway smash, it's easy to figure out what the season's hottest show is going to be: Jersey Boys, the Tony Award-winning musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

The Broward Center for the Performing Arts -- the only area venue offering Jersey Boys this season -- will be home to the show for four weeks this spring, a run twice as long as the center's other touring Broadway shows, four times as long as such shows run at both Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center and West Palm Beach's Kravis Center.

But that long run of the show that redefined what makes a great ''jukebox'' musical isn't the only standout difference in the three centers' schedules.

The Arsht Center's oddly placed offerings -- a pair of shows at the start of the season and another pair at the end -- gives South Florida's largest county arguably the weakest lineup, a small selection of mostly vintage titles. Some less-than-thrilled subscribers have been left wondering how that happened.

Broadway Across America, acquired by Key Brand Entertainment from Live Nation in early 2008, programs the Broadway touring series at the Arsht, the Broward Center and in 32 other American cities. It used to provide the Kravis lineup as well, but as of this season the center has booked its own Kravis on Broadway series.

''We wanted to have more quality control over the productions and reap the benefits of a self-presenter,'' says W. Lee Bell, the Kravis' senior director of programming. ``Live Nation never saw us as a first-run city.''

IT'S A PUZZLE

Putting together a touring Broadway season, as Broadway Across America notes on its website, is like assembling a complex jigsaw puzzle. From the more than 40 shows that are touring the country this season, the company has to pick lineups that have an artistic and commercial balance, shows that haven't been in an area too recently or won't rile a more conservative audience (think Spring Awakening), and productions whose touring routes will allow them to fit into available dates at venues where resident companies (such as the Florida Grand Opera, the Miami City Ballet, the Concert Association of Florida and the New World Symphony at the Arsht) get first crack at prime-season scheduling.

These realities can result in, well, interesting season lineups in which fresh-from-Broadway hits, vintage touring shows, non-Equity productions, Off-Broadway hits and shows that have never actually been near the Great White Way are lumped together under the 'Broadway' banner.

Consider South Florida's 2008-'09 touring Broadway lineups -- and this is just the subscription fare at the three arts centers, without the ''extras'' like the return of Hairspray at the Broward Center or Cats at the Arsht.

Besides Jersey Boys, here's what theatergoers in Fort Lauderdale will see: the return of Mamma Mia! (another hugely popular ''jukebox'' musical released as a movie last summer), Avenue Q (the aimed-at-adults Sesame Street homage that played the Arsht last season), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (a fairly recent family musical), that lilac-tressed diva Dame Edna and the revival of 1975's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Chorus Line.

Kravis subscribers will be the first in South Florida to see Legally Blonde the Musical (a show that has been broadcast on MTV), and they'll also get Avenue Q, a new non-Equity touring version of The Wizard of Oz (which has never played Broadway), The Drowsy Chaperone (it played the Broward Center last season) and Israeli actor Topol reprising his starring film role as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.

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