The Shubert Organization has announced that it will be renaming two of its Broadway theaters after the company’s own executives. “The Royale will become the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, and the Plymouth will be renamed the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.” Theaters have traditionally been named after those who impact theater on the artistic side of things, and the reaction to the announcement has been mainly in the realm of disbelief. “Several prominent producers and publicity agents, all of whom refused to be identified for fear of angering the powerful Shubert Organization, responded with disbelief, laughter or both.”
Blog
Will Stern Jumpstart Satellite Radio?
When shock jock Howard Stern announced this week that he would be departing his syndicated radio show to join the lineup of Sirius Satellite Radio, it marked a seismic shift in the broadcasting landscape. Satellite is still in its infancy, and while it has been growing steadily, it has yet to attract an audience the size of Stern’s current one. And unlike other well-known hosts who have defected to satellite recently, Stern has the potential to bring a sizable chunk of the middle American radio audience with him to the other side.
How To Review Michael Moore
How should critics approach the new wave of decidedly skewed “documentary” films in an age of political polarization and intolerance? Many readers complain that such films are nothing but propaganda, and they’re not exactly wrong, but should reviewers be expected to chase down the truth of every supposed fact in every nonfiction film? And can such pictures really be reviewed simply as movies, or must they be separately graded as political documents. It’s a tricky issue…
Representational Art Back On The Radar Screen
“Once photography took over the role of depicting reality in the mid-19th century, painters faced the question of what to paint. As new styles from Impressionism to Abstraction flowered, the dominant approach was to avoid anything the camera could record.
Still, artists who stuck with recognizable images continued to paint and exhibit their work – without the respect of modern art’s movers and shakers… these painters of so-called representational art have finally been brought back into the fold – and that the art world has finally shed the notion that a single style defines a ‘serious’ artist.”
Bypassing The Middleman
As the corporations that control the popular music market continue to tighten their grip and shrink their playlists, bands outside the increasingly narrow “mainstream” are turning to the vaguely defined world of internet buzz to market themselves. With the recent proliferation of web sites designed to be “people hubs” (bringing users together around common interests or relationships), musicians have seen an opportunity to generate interest in their work without having to crack the playlist at MTV or ClearChannel.
The Ultimate In Narrowcasting
“Wires, batteries, plastic containers, cardboard boxes, drills, glue guns, a single-watt FM transmitter, perhaps a toy truck or a stuffed rabbit — put these together and you have a personal radio station that could start a public revolution. At least that’s the idea behind Radio Re-Volt: One Person .00One Watt, a project by Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center that intends to open the radio airwaves to the general public, one small radio station at a time.”
On-Demand Radio, Straight To Your iPod
New technology that can “syndicate” online audio content to iPods and other digital music devices in the same way that RSS feeds distribute text from web sites is gaining in popularity. The audio feeds, which are by subscription, can allow listeners to hear their favorite radio programs on demand as they are fed to the portable device.
Standing Room’s Looking Like A Pretty Good Deal
Movie theaters figured out years ago that patrons like to be able to watch a film without requiring major physical rehabilitation when they pry themselves out of their seats at the end of the evening. So why are so many newly refurbished Broadway theaters still sporting totally substandard seating with zero leg room? The answer is a combination of historic preservation restrictions and profit-driven decision making.
Desperately Seeking Playwrights
The UK’s largest theater companies are openly soliciting the younger generation of playwrights to write the next generation of great British plays. “We are, it seems, witnessing a shift in the theatre culture, an explosion of energy not witnessed since the emergence of Joe Penhall, Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, Conor McPherson et al through the Royal Court a decade ago. That energy has, however, long since dissipated,” and the best young writers tend to be found working in the television world, making for a work experience which doesn’t necessarily translate well to the stage.
Bringing Radio Up To Date
While digital radio has made nothing so visible as a dent in the American broadcast landscape, the UK is predicting that 13 million digital sets will be sold there by 2008, and the new technology is expected to all but replace analog radio broadcasting within a decade. The government is considering setting a “switch-off date” for the analog broadcasts, as most Western governments have done for TV signals, in an effort to speed the transition.