“For most of their history, these companies scoffed at traditional media. Can’t measure it, can’t convert viewers into customers, not enough real-time data. Yet here are the 21st century’s most dominant brands behaving like their counterparts of the late 20th, using TV as a key tool to build image and consumer loyalty. Taking a half-step back, this development is a bit rich given that other than Microsoft, these are companies whose businesses are working, through digital advertising dominance and streaming content, essentially to destroy the modern TV industry.” – Fast Company
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Planting Vineyards
If expanding our base to new communities is necessary, we need an appropriate metaphor for the process. I think I’ve finally stumbled upon something workable. – Doug Borwick
Beckett: A bit of Rough at the Old Vic
Daniel Radcliffe’s sense of physical theatre is magnificent, but, finally, the evening belongs to Alan Cumming. – Paul Levy
Polarized News Is Hurting Advertising Revenues
Just 9 of the most 100 most-read news articles from 2019 were considered brand safe by keywords blacklists, per the study. Often many words are blocked in fear of one meaning, but then are misapplied. For example, words like “attack” are often included in blacklists, even it it pertains to something positive, like an “attack wing” in soccer. – Axios
When Working Men Bought ‘Pride And Prejudice’ For A Penny
“Austen first emerged in penny editions in the 1890s. Penny versions were modeled on the sensational Penny Dreadfuls, those cheap stories of violence on which Britain’s lawmakers were known to blame the rise in urban crime. Operating in tandem, two newspaper giants stepped in to offer better entertainment to ‘the poorer millions.’ These alternatives were pushed as ‘Penny Delightfuls.'” And yes, poor working men and women bought and read them. – Literary Hub
Marin Alsop Named Chief Conductor At Ravinia
She will be the first person to hold this post, which has been created for her, in Ravinia’s 116-year history. – Chicago Tribune
How Intimacy Directors Do Their Jobs
No less than dance or fight choreography, intimacy choreography consists of specific, repeatable movements, and intimacy directors find desexualized language to use with actors (as opposed to “More passionate!”) to create the right effect for the audience. Holly L. Derr talks with some of the creators of the practice of intimacy direction about how they developed it and use it. – HowlRound
YouTube Now Makes More From Advertising Than All Broadcast Networks Combined
YouTube makes more money from advertising than the ABC, NBC and Fox broadcast networks—combined. It’s an astonishing domination of the video ad market. – The Information
Long A Visual Desert, Baghdad Is Coming Alive With Political Art
“Where did all this art come from? How is it that a city where beauty and color have been largely suppressed for decades by poverty, and by the oppression or indifference of successive governments, suddenly came to be so alive?” – The New York Times
UK’s Post-Brexit Plans On Copyright Worry Creators
Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) Deputy Chief Executive Barbara Hayes laid out the scale of the challenge the Government’s decision presents to authors: “At a time when the UK creative industries are growing to unprecedented levels we are also seeing a persistent decline in the earnings of professional authors, representing a real terms decrease of 42% since 2005.” – Arts Professional