“Video has jumped the shark, escaping the bonds of cable, dish, disc or cassette. Every media company from AOL to Zenith is scrambling to sign deals with programmers, allowing consumers to find and purchase nearly any form of moving image to play over any device.”
Blog
Missouri School Bans “Crucible” After “Grease” Fire
A high school in Missouri stages the musical “Grease.” But the high school gets complaints, writers “complaining that scenes of drinking, smoking and a couple kissing went too far, and glorified conduct that the community tries to discourage. One letter, from someone who had not seen the show but only heard about it, criticized “immoral behavior veiled behind the excuse of acting out a play.” The school superintendent “watched a video of the play, ultimately agreeing that ‘Grease’ was unsuitable for the high school, despite his having approved it beforehand, without looking at the script. Hoping to avoid similar complaints in the future, he decided to ban the scheduled spring play, ‘The Crucible’ by Arthur Miller.”
Placing Products Takes Off
The 30-second TV commercial is old news. Now product placement rules. Over “the last three years, the number of placements, including the new integration, jumped 30% to 108,261 last year. NBC ranked highest with 7,470 instances of a product being shown on its reality show The Contender alone and an additional 3,009 placement shots on The Apprentice.”
NPR In The Passing Lane
While many news organizations have been reducing staff, National Public Radio has been on a hiring campaign. “The NPR news operation has added 50 journalists in the past three years, raising the total from 350 to 400. Ten years ago NPR had six foreign bureaus; it just opened its 16th, in Shanghai, putting it in the running with major national news organizations. The New York Times and CNN both have 26, the Los Angeles Times has 22, the Washington Post has 19.”
Creative Scotland Awards Fall Behind
The Creative Scotland Awards are six years old, but £250,000 worth of winning projects have yet to be finished. “With less than a month to go before this year’s awards are announced, the revelation has caused outrage among Scotland’s artistic community, who complain that the awards are an indulgence and are not properly monitored.”
Arts: The (Alarming) Wage Gap
At a time when the economics of the arts world seem particularly challenging, there’s a category of arts worker who is doing quite well. The artistic directors and upper management of arts organizations are scoring huge salaries, while the rank and file artists are getting squeezed.
Aggressive Skin
Dance has always been focused on the body, of course, but the latest trend in modern dance is taking things to a whole new level, with an increasing number of dancers appearing completely naked onstage. “The upsurge isn’t rooted in sexual liberation, as it was when nude bodies appeared onstage in the 1960’s, or in political defiance, as when they re-emerged in the 80’s. Instead… nudity is a way to force the audience into some form of discomfort.”
Success Breeds New Challenges
Oakland Ballet may be gone, but California’s Bay Area remains one of the most vibrant dance scenes in the U.S. That’s a good thing, of course, but with literally hundreds of companies of all sizes and shapes competing for attention (and audience,) staying solvent can be a day-to-day proposition. Some companies look for a cultural niche to fill, while others seek a unique geographic location that will allow them to put down neighborhood roots. Donor fatigue is a real concern, as is duplication – too much of the same thing in a single area.
Does Hollywood Blackball Gay Actors?
One of the great mysteries of modern Hollywood is why so many gay actors continue to maintain sham marriages and insist that they are heterosexual in what may be the most devoutly liberal enclave in the U.S. Now, one openly gay actor is publicly accusing the film industry of being unwilling to cast gays in leading roles. Ian McKellen, who is best known for his role in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, says that “It is very, very, very difficult for an American actor who wants a film career to be open about his sexuality. And even more difficult for a woman if she’s lesbian.”
Radio Pay-For-Play Scandal May Be Biggest Ever
Sources at the Federal Communications Commissions are saying that the current investigation into “payola” – the illegal practice of paying radio stations or DJs in exchange for airplay – may be the largest such operation in American history. “Several of the largest radio conglomerates in America – the corporate owners of FM radio stations across the nation – are within the scope of the FCC probe, which was triggered by the two year long pay-for-play investigation by [New York Attorney General Eliot] Spitzer.” Hundreds of individual stations across the country and the record companies representing some of the world’s biggest pop stars are also being probed.