Physicists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have “found a way to digitally map the grooves in warped or damaged shellac records and wax cylinders, and play them back using a sort of virtual needle — all with the same powerful microscope and computer technology they use to measure particle tracks. The ‘non-contact’ optical scanning method could also detect any scratches, or clicks and pops due to dust, and automatically filter them, allowing a digital rendition to sound as clear as the original performance.”
Month: April 2004
Goodman: PBS Sucks, And It’s Time We Faced It
As San Francisco’s PBS affiliate, KQED, celebrates its 50th birthday, Tim Goodman has decided that its time for PBS supporters to face the obvious fact that the network and its affiliates are visionless blobs on the cultural landscape, fulfilling no mission and serving no real viewership. “This is essentially what PBS is now: A channel for people who don’t get cable. There’s a reason PBS’ viewing audience is moving beyond age 55 — much of the core audience, loyal to a fault, believes PBS is the only alternative to dumb or bad network television series. But these are people using 8-track tapes in a CD world.”
PA Ballet Launches $10 mil Drive
“In an effort to help the Pennsylvania Ballet leap higher onto the national dance stage, company officials yesterday launched a $10 million capital campaign. It is hoped that the money, $6 million of which has already been raised or promised, will secure the troupe’s place among the country’s most prominent companies by funding more touring, more dancers, and more new ballets. The company would also like to add office and studio space, expand its artistic repertoire, and create a substantial endowment.”
Met Opera Still Looking For Radio Funding
Last weekend, the Metropolitan Opera broadcast its final live performance of the season, the last time the series will carry a sponsorship credit for Texaco, which kept the opera on the air for more than six decades. And while the Met has found money to cover the cost of next season’s broadcasts, the long-term future of the wildly expensive series is still very much in jeopardy. Met chairwoman Beverly Sills is spearheading the effort to solicit donations for future seasons, and her basic strategy is a simple appeal to the warm, gauzy memories of all the moneyed folks who grew up listening to the Met.
War and the Power of Images
Everyone in America knows that the U.S. is currently fighting a war in Iraq, and that American soldiers are dying there on a regular basis. So why the big brouhaha over whether photos showing the flag-draped coffins of the dead are published stateside? Because, says Joanne Ostrow, images of war have always been the most powerful method of swaying public opinion in times of war. “The debate hasn’t changed since Matthew Brady’s 1862 battlefield photos of the Civil War. Printed as etchings in newspapers, they shocked the nation.” The coffin photos, however respectful, have the same capacity to bring the horror of war home in a starkly visible way, at a time when political leadership would prefer that Americans keep a pragmatic outlook.
Take That Concert Home With You
Like that concert you just heard? Now you can take a recording of it home with you after the concert. “On May 21, new digital kiosks offering the tiny drives will be installed at Maxwell’s, a small indie-rock club in Hoboken, N.J. At $10 a pop for the recording, and $20 for the reusable, keychain drive, let the downloading begin. This is a tool that allows fans to take home and share some of the best independent music from small live venues around the country.”
Boston Museum Gets Site Approval For Expansion
“The projected expansion of [Boston’s] Museum of Fine Arts moved forward this week when the Boston Redevelopment Authority unanimously approved the museum’s site plan during a key hearing. The approval gives the museum permission to start work on a plan that will nearly double its size, as well as reestablish entrances on the south… The museum is a year away from breaking ground on the first phase of the expansion, which is expected to be completed by 2009. It will add galleries, new courtyards and — its most architecturally significant feature — a crystal spine running through and over the existing building. A planned $425 million capital campaign will pay for the project.”
Edwards Savoring His Martyr Role
Ever since National Public Radio announced that it was replacing Bob Edwards as host of “Morning Edition,” listeners have been howling. NPR is standing by its decision to take the program “in a new direction,” but senior managers are admitting that they could not have bungled the situation more completely. For Edwards’s part, he seems to be enjoying the attention, and is making no effort to alleviate the discomfort of his NPR bosses. From the listener who set up a “Save Bob Edwards” website to the defendant at the Tyco fraud trial who began badgering the NPR reporter covering him, the NPR faithful are creating a groundswell, and Edwards is loving every minute of it.
Is Variable Ticket Pricing Good For Business?
A limited study of Broadway ticket pricing practices, under which two people sitting in the same section of a given theater may have paid wildly different prices depending on when and where they bought their tickets, suggests that, contrary to some industry concerns, variable pricing doesn’t seem to make consumers unhappy. “[C]onsumers were largely unaffected by price discrimination relative to uniform pricing, while producers experienced a 5 percent increase in profits… [O]n average, it looks like it didn’t make much difference to consumers whether there was price discrimination or not.”
RIAA Sues 477 More
The Recording Industry Association of America has sued another 477 alleged illegal file-swappers, who the industry claims are undermining commerce and causing a prolonged slump in music sales. The new round of lawsuits brings the total number of sued swappers to 2,454.