No show gets a chance to find itself these days. Debut as a hit or you’re gone off the schedule. “Forget about “finding an audience” — there just isn’t time. If you’re not doing Friends numbers right out of the box, you’re not going to last long enough to accumulate the episodes for a decent DVD retrospective release. Used to be, 100 episodes was the magic number to shoot for, to accommodate five-night-a-week strip syndication. Now, you’re lucky to get through “the front nine” of a typically 23-episode network season.”
Month: April 2004
All The Opera You Can Eat For £50
All of a sudden there are all these opportunities to buy cheap tickets to opera and music in London. So here’s the challenge – how much can you get in to £50? Try five shows at some of the city’s biggest performing arts venues.
Critic: Opera’s Cut-Rate Ticket Plan Won’t Expand Audience
London’s Royal Opera House’s plans to offer some of its best seats for £10 is not going to widen the audience for opera, says a leading think tank. The critique suggests that “such schemes are more likely to encourage the middle class to go to the opera more often, rather than widen access.”
Rocky 2 Tops Classic FM Poll (Again)
For the fourth year in a row Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 has topped Classic FM’s most-loved music poll. “Its emergence – in each year so far of the new century – as the British classical listening public’s favourite tune indicates Rachmaninov’s position as perhaps the most popular mainstream composer of the last 70 years. Its place was secured by the votes of the commercial station’s listeners.”
Was Rock Critic Fired Because He’s Too Old?
Larry Nager was recently fired as the Cincinnati Enquirer’s pop music critic. Nager says it was because he just turned 50. “The Enquirer, Nager claims, deemed him expendable because he didn’t fit the paper’s profile of someone who should be reporting on the Britneys and Justins of the music world. Nager accuses the Enquirer — and many other newspapers — of targeting an 18-34 female demographic, a move he calls a reaction to the whole MTV-ing of our society … newspapers are trying belatedly to be ‘with it.'”
Scotland Dropping 800 Historical Sites
“Around 800 archaeological sites, including forts, carved crosses, standing stones and cairns, could be dropped from Historic Scotland’s official schedule. Critics said the plan was a ‘betrayal of Scotland’s heritage’, which would allow developers to build on protected sites. The change follows a decision to restrict protection to sites deemed of ‘cultural significance’ and ‘spiritual value’.”
Sharp: Making Denver An Essential Museum
When Lewis Sharp arrived as director of the Denver Art Museum in 1989, the talent for a good museum was in place but not realized. In the past 15 years, Sharp has transformed the museum, and raised $63 million for an addition designed by Daniel Libeskind. “I hope that the building will allow us to create such a presence within this community and within the country that the Denver Art Museum will not be overlooked. Simply by the presence of that building, people will say, ‘When you go out to the American West, you ought to go to Denver and see that incredible building by Daniel Libeskind.”‘
Diversity In Education? Not Even Close
“In the end, we like policies like affirmative action not so much because they solve the problem of racism but because they tell us that racism is the problem we need to solve. And the reason we like the problem of racism is that solving it just requires us to give up our prejudices, whereas solving the problem of economic inequality might require something more — it might require us to give up our money. It’s not surprising that universities of the upper middle class should want their students to feel comfortable. What is surprising is that diversity should have become the hallmark of liberalism.”
Humana Fest – Emphasis On Women
“Five of the six new full-length works at this year’s buzz-generating Humana Festival of New American Plays were written by women. Coincidence?
US Cracking Down On Porn
The US Department of Justice is cracking down on pornography. The DoJ plans to “prosecute those producing and distributing obscene material. ‘Nothing will be off-limits as far as content goes. We’ll do everything we can to deter this conduct.’ But that may be difficult. “More than 11,000 adult films are released annually in the US and there are 800 million DVD and video rentals of adult movies each year, according to the trade association Adult Video News.”