Canadian digital TV was switched on in 2001 with 45 new subscriber channels. It’s hardly been a success. “How do you market in a mass way when more than half of the country still doesn’t have digital service? How do you persuade people to add the channel once they’ve already chosen their core package? But for a channel that will always earn 90 per cent of its revenue from subscribers – as opposed to advertisers – it’s a problem that has to be solved.”
Blog
CD Sales Reverse Declines, Now Five Months Of Increses
After a couple of years of sales downturns in the recording business, the industry has just racked up five straight months of sales gains. “So why are so few people in the music world ready to celebrate an industry comeback? ‘The past four or five months has turned the predictive ability of all of us on its head. I think people are holding their breath’.”
In RoadTrip: Struggling With A London Concert Hall
Sam Bergman on tour with the Minnesota Orchestra: The orchestra plays Barbican Hall in London, a place the critics hate, and musicians find difficult to play in. “The audience is listening to the big picture, and we’re working to create an understandable canvas, but the tiny muscle movements and mental adjustments required dictate that we must spend an inordinate amount of our time and effort on the seemingly insignificant details of our instruments and our surroundings. It’s a bit like the paintings of George Seurat – huge, beautiful depictions of idyllic scenes, all created from tiny dots dabbed on the canvas one at a time. The artist obsesses over the dots…”
At The Philhamonic: Giant Video
The New York Philharmonic, like many orchestras, is experimenting with giant video screens. “Just as, if you go to a football game, the camera focuses in on the face of the athlete. You wouldn’t want to go to a movie and just look at the back of Cary Grant. You want to see his face.” But the orchestra’s players aren’t enthusiastic so far: “It just seems like a bit of a sellout. Better we should spend the money on a hall that brings the audience closer to us. People might as well stay home with their big-screen TV’s. It’s going the route of MTV, and I’m not sure it’s the way to go.”
On The Trail Of Stolen Artifacts
An ancient Egyptian stone stele unearthed a decade ago should have, under Egyptian law, “been turned over to the government, a recovered shard of the national patrimony. Instead, something considerably more commonplace happened. It became an outlaw. Quietly, it passed into the global antiquities market. Five years later, cleansed of its illicit origins, it emerged in New York as a rich man’s prize, in the foyer of a Fifth Avenue apartment.”
Judge Disallows DVD Copying Software
A US Federal judge has ruled that a company must stop selling a software program that allows users to make copies of DVDs. But the company vows to appeal: “There is no difference between making a copy of a music CD for personal use and making a backup of a DVD movie for personal use. We are so firm in our belief in the principle of fair use that we will appeal this ruling immediately. And we will take our fight all the way to the Supreme Court, if that’s what it takes to win.”
The Cuban Connection
“After nearly half a century of defections, including 20 in 2003, Cuban dancers and teachers are exerting a powerful influence on American and world dance that brings to mind the profound impact Russian dancers brought to the West as their defections mounted in the dusk of the Soviet empire.”
In Connecticut – Are Arts Supporter’s Troubles Trouble For The Arts?
Connecticut governor John Rowland has been a major supporter of the arts. Now the governmor’s in trouble, and his “troubles couldn’t come at a worse time for cultural groups. The arts are weathering tough economic times locally, statewide and nationally. New initiatives are being downsized or postponed. And a new state super-agency – established by the legislature at the governor’s urging last year to oversee the state’s interests in tourism, arts, history, culture and film – is still finding its identity, focus and voice. During this time of trials and tribulations for the governor, is the arts agenda lost?”
A Shadow Of Mikhail
Mikhail Baryshnikov is on another tour. But his aging body isn’t keeping up. “In brief, he sells tickets on his reputation and performs whatever he’s commissioned from contemporary dance-makers, slight though the result might be. But how much can a choreographer ask of a vintage instrument in a fragile condition? Fit though Baryshnikov is, he has endured knee surgery many times. For his European tour, he’s had to abandon a tricky solo…”
The National’s Hytner Team
“Nicholas Hytner took over as artistic director last April and in less than a year has turned the sometimes recalcitrant South Bank complex into a house of hits of an order unmatched by his predecessors. Is Hytner’s a one-man fiefdom? No, actually, and certainly not in the style of Trevor Nunn, his predecessor, whose five-and-a-half-year tenure was very much given over to none other than Nunn.”