Current TV is based on the idea of viewer contribution. “While there’s no question the number of people who can edit videos at home has skyrocketed, Current TV has discovered that the number who can make interesting or watchable “pods” is substantially smaller. To separate the wheat from the chaff, the network uses a Web based “green-lighting” process through which viewers rate each others’ submissions. Videos that rise to the top are put on air and the contributors are paid a fee that starts at $500. That process yields only about 30% of what the network needs to fill its days. The channel fills the rest with commercially-produced or “commissioned” segments about social issues, fashion, and music.”
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Lion King Goes To China
Disney will stage a full production of The Lion King in China. The show will take up residence in Shanghai. The show will be performed in English at the Shanghai Grand Theater, a city-owned operation. “It will require three Boeing 747s to move the set from its current home in Melbourne, and a team of 136 people to stage each show. ‘We expect over 150,000 people will see this live show in China. … We hope to sell out’.”
Wales: No Kissing In School Plays
“In a new directive – which, it’s feared, might soon be applied in England, too – the Welsh assembly states that kissing in school productions should be replaced by ‘a peck on the cheek or an embrace’, and that characters should ‘hug each other in friendship’.”
Brits Queue For Spamalot
Fears about whether there would be interest in “Spamalot” when it opens in London have been quelled after lines formed around the block to buy tickets as soon as they went on sale.
Doctorow Wins Pen/Faulkner
E.L. Doctorow has won this year’s PEN/Faulkner Foundation fiction award for his novel “The March.” “It is the second PEN/Faulkner award for the much-honored Doctorow, who won in 1990 for “Billy Bathgate” and whose 1975 novel “Ragtime” established him as a writer capable of combining literary ambition and commercial success.”
Ray Baretto, 76
Barretto, a percussionist and bandleader who was a pioneer of the Latin jazz and salsa movements, has died. “Known as ‘King of the Hard Hands,’ Barretto recorded at least 50 albums in a career spanning more than 40 years. Collaborating with singer Celia Cruz, Barretto won a Grammy in 1990 with the album Ritmo en el Corazon.”
Met Signs Return/Loan Deal With Italy
“The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Italian government have signed a watershed accord on Tuesday under which the Met will return 21 artifacts that Italy says were looted from archaeological sites within its borders. In exchange for yielding the works to Italy — including a prized sixth-century B.C. Greek vase known as the Euphronios krater and a set of Hellenistic silver — the Met will receive long-term loans of prestigious objects from Italian collections.”
Met Trustee To Talk Italian Artifacts
A major Metropolitan Museum trustee agrees to talk with the Italian government about disputed artifactgs in her collection. “The Met’s director, Philippe de Montebello, said the trustee, Shelby White, had told him last week that she was willing to meet with Italian cultural officials to discuss eight works she owns that the Italians believe were illicitly excavated and removed from the country. ‘She wants to do the right thing and she is eager for this to be behind her’.”
A First: War Crimes Against Architecture
Slobodan Milosovic is on trial for war crimes. Among the charges? “The intentional and wanton destruction of religious and cultural buildings of the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat communities. This is the first time that anyone has been properly charged in a court of law for wartime attacks on architecture as well as civilians, and a direct connection noted between the two.”
More Woes For Virginia Performing Arts Center Project
Budget proposals pending before the House of Delegates and the state Senate would strip $4.5 million of the $8.5 million appropriated last year for the planned performing-arts center in downtown Richmond.