Google, the search-engine-turned-internet-juggernaut, is finalizing plans to begin streaming TV programs online. The company has “already signed up a channel in the United States to provide programmes for its Google TV station and is in talks with the BBC to broadcast its shows. [Google] hopes to build up a massive online database of programmes that can be searched and watched from any computer, with users able to search for episodes of any show from broadcasters who sign up to the service. It will also let British viewers watch hit television shows from the US months before they are shown in the UK.”
Blog
Zeroing Out The Arts
“It’s not easy to pinpoint the day culture died at ground zero. Since four cultural organizations were selected for the site a year ago, the notion of giving the arts an integral role has been gradually – and more lately precipitously – slipping away. At this point, culture is being cast as a suspicious interloper… A lack of powerful, outspoken advocates seems to have been a significant ingredient in the erosion of culture at the site. By putting the development corporation in charge of choosing the cultural groups, the state failed to enlist an enthusiastic commitment from business leaders and philanthropists.”
Universal/Dreamworks Merger Dies On The Table
“Dreamworks SKG, the movie studio founded by a trio of entertainment moguls including the director Steven Spielberg, has called off talks to be bought by NBC Universal for about $1 billion… The failure to reach a deal was thought to have resulted from disagreements over the price and Mr Spielberg’s reluctance to give up the independence that he has enjoyed at DreamWorks, which allowed him to work with competing studios.”
The Mouse That Keeps On Giving
The Walt Disney Company is donating its considerable collection of West African art to the Smithsonian Institution. 525 pieces of traditional African art and craft, which were originally gathered by a New York real estate tycoon, will go to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, which has been struggling financially. The collection is difficult to appraise, but experts place its monetary value somewhere between $20 million and $50 million.
Build It And They Will Come (Maybe. When They’re Good and Ready.)
There was a time when the audience for classical music preferred – nay, demanded – that the genre be presented as a dressed-up affair, all formality and glamour, and that those in attendance listen “not only with their senses, but their soul.” These days, most classical presenters are considerably less picky – as long as there are butts in the seats, who cares what they’re wearing or if they squirm a bit? Amanda Holloway suggests that, in a world of seemingly endless entertainment options, catering to supposedly modern tastes just isn’t ever going to bring new audiences to the concert hall, and neither is reminding them constantly that culture is good for them. “No clever direct-mailing approach from an arts centre can replace… personal motivation.”
London Mayor Gets Personal In Statue Battle
The mayor of London is taking sides in a debate over whether a new sculpture of Nelson Mandela by artist Ian Walters should be placed in Trafalgar Square. The Westminster City Council decided on the advice of renowned sculptor Glynn Williams to reject the statue, saying it doesn’t fit the area. Mayor Ken Livingstone took expection, and took a highly personal shot at Williams in the process, holding up a photo of a Williams sculpture design and declaring that “The only sense in which that looks like [former UK Prime Minister] Harold Wilson is if he has been dead for several days, has started to decompose, and is emerging through a pile of dog mess.” Livingstone also pointed out that Williams’s design for that particular sculpture was rejected in favor of one by the very same Ian Walters.
The Voices In Your Head
You probably think that your taste in music is your own, borne of your free spirit and personal experience. Well, it isn’t. No, the people who tell you what you like to hear (or at least control what you have access to) are a motley collection of TV presenters, marketing execs, and general know-it-alls who you have never heard of, and who generally like it that way. Of course, they must be fairly good at knowing what you like, since you do like that new Coldplay single on your iPod. Don’t you? C’mon, listen to it again…
And Just In Time For The Movie Release, Too!
Random House has announced that Truman Capote’s long-lost first novel will be published next month. The manuscript for Summer Crossing, which Capote wrote beginning in 1943, was found in 2004 in a box of the author’s papers put up for auction. “Set in New York just after World War II, Summer Crossing is the story of a young lighthearted socialite, Grady McNeil, whose parents leave her alone in their Manhattan penthouse for the summer while they travel to France to check on their war-torn villa.”
The Tate Scramble
Five years after its opening, London’s Tate Modern museum is rehanging its entire collection, changing the order in which patrons will view the works and replacing groupings organized by subject matter with a system of categories such as cubism, minimalism, and surrealism. “When the new look is unveiled in May 2006 about 40% of the works will not have been seen at the gallery before.”
Spurned Conductor Rides Again
“The conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who was dumped by a major record label after a long and distinguished career, has had the last laugh after his self-released album of Bach cantatas was named record of the year. Sir John, a world expert on the music of J S Bach, took the top honours at the Classic FM Gramophone Awards in London yesterday, one of the most prestigious dates in the classical music calendar. He took the decision to release the music himself after the label Deutsche Grammophon pulled the plug on him in 2000 after nearly 20 years, just as he was about to embark on a tour of Europe performing all of Bach’s 200 cantatas.”