Blog

Cincinnati Symphony Raises Ticket Prices, Takes A Big Hit

Last season the Cincinnati Symphony raised ticket prices by 25 percent. It was a disastrous move. “The orchestra lost 10 percent of its subscribers and its attendance dropped 12 percent in the 51-concert season that ended in May, in figures released today by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Average attendance was 1,707, meaning on most nights, the 3,417-seat Music Hall was half empty. Such a steep decline in one year is unprecedented in recent symphony history. For the past decade, attendance has hovered between 1,900 and 2,000. Last season, 1,935 concertgoers heard the symphony play on an average concert evening.”

Does BS Matter? (That’s The Truth)

“Philosophers have a vocational bent for trying to divine the essences of things that most people never suspected had an essence, and bullshit is a case in point. Could there really be some property that all instances of bullshit possess and all non-instances lack? The question might sound ludicrous, but it is, at least in form, no different from one that philosophers ask about truth. Among the most divisive issues in philosophy today is whether there is anything important to be said about the essential nature of truth. Bullshit, by contrast, might seem to be a mere bagatelle. Yet there are parallels between the two which lead to the same perplexities.”

Reinventing The Bolshoi

“When the Soviet Union fell, much of what the Bolshoi had in the way of evening-length ballets was pre-revolutionary classics revised according to Soviet dictates and post-revolutionary ballets created according to those dictates, tales of brave underdogs besting—or piteously defeated by—corrupt, powerful folk. How was the company to replace, or even augment, this material? How, after seventy-five years, do you unlearn the artistic lessons of Communism: the bombast, the corniness, the texturelessness? Not easily…”

When Did Sex Become A Liability At The Movies?

“Nowadays, nudity is a decided liability when it comes to the commercial success of the movie. In 2004, none of the six major studios’ top 25 grossing films, led by Spider-Man 2, Shrek 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and The Incredibles, contained any sexually oriented nudity; only one had a restrictive R rating—Warner Bros.’ Troy—and that was mainly due to the film’s gory violence, not its sexual content. The absence of sex—at least graphic sex—is key to the success of Hollywood’s moneymaking movies.”

Searching For Better Search

Universities are focusing on improving search technologies. “The search problems of today are different from those of five years ago. With books, scholarly papers and television programs being digitized and put online, the technology necessary to search through the material needs to be that much better. People need a way to trust the information they find and to ask more-complex questions with search tools so they can extract knowledge or ideas.”

Kentucky Public Radio Station Restores Keillor To Air

A Kentucky public radio station has returned Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac to its schedule after pulling it from the air two weeks ago. WUKY General Manger Tom Godell dropped “The Writer’s Almanac” after questioning the language in some of the poems Keillor had been reading on the show over the last year. “It’s not like he’s behaving like Howard Stern, but the FCC has been so inconsistent, we don’t know where we stand,” Godell told the Lexington Herald-Leader about the initial decision to drop the show. “We could no longer risk a fine.”

Where Canadians Spend Their Media Time (Internet Up, TV Down)

A new study “suggests internet use among Canadians is up about 46 per cent to 12.7 hours a week from 8.7 hours in 2002. That increase comes while radio listening has dropped an average of five hours to 11 hours per week. Television still remained at the top of the list of most-used media sources, according to the poll, with Canadians watching an average of 14.3 hours of TV per week. But younger internet users spent 14.7 hours online a week, about three hours more than they did on radio and television. Teens spent only 2.5 hours a week reading newspapers.”

Getty Hires Brand To Run Museum

The J. Paul Getty Trust has hired Michael Brand as director of its museum. “The new director has headed the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts since 2000 and previously served as a museum executive in his native Australia. At the J. Paul Getty Museum, Brand will oversee the acquisition, education, exhibition, service and outreach operations.”