“Everybody thinks about it one way. They think, Okay, Amazon is going to buy movies or produce movies. AT&T or Comcast is going to start skipping theater distribution and go straight to your TV set. It makes sense, right? But there are opportunities to go the other way. And that is, I think, if Amazon owned AMC, it might release the first four episodes of season three of Jack Ryan in the theater.” – New York Magazine
Category: AUDIENCE
Research: The Conditions Under Which Audiences Say They’ll Return To Theaters
What will it take to make people feel confident enough to return to going to shows? – American Theatre
Slowly, Carefully, Berlin Starts Reopening Its Museums To Public
“Berlin State Museums, an umbrella group overseeing 17 museums in the city, … decided to start small, reopening just four of the institutions under its control on Tuesday. Christine Haak, the organization’s deputy director general, said in a phone interview that she wanted to observe how visitors behave in the spaces before deciding about the rest.” – The New York Times
TV Advertising Pitches Run Into A Few Dense Coronavirus-Related Roadblocks
This is when networks usually spend millions of dollars for a live show to gain billions of dollars in advertising for the upcoming year. “Advertising has long served as a media-industry lifeline. This year, with the pandemic forcing the closure of the big media companies’ other lines of business – it will be even more critical.” But no one knows how it will work. – Variety
Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theater Pitches A 2021 ‘Mini Season’ Starting In March
The Guthrie’s leadership had envisioned various scenarios as lockdown orders arrived. But “now, as the ripple effects of the coronavirus health crisis are felt throughout the economy, and the eagerness of folks to return to large gatherings in enclosed spaces has understandably plunged, the Guthrie has announced a season start well after any of those alternatives and offered a stark budgetary forecast, amending earlier projections.” – American Theatre
La Scala Launches Virtual Tours Of Its Opera House
The project includes virtual tours of the theater, backstage and museum, along with 240,000 archival photos and 16,000 documents, more than 40 digital exhibits and close-up views of costumes worn by stars such as Maria Callas. Performances of operas are available on another platform through Italy’s RAI state television. – Washington Post (AP)
To Stream Or Not To Stream? Arthouse Film Distributors Face Quandary With This Year’s New Releases
Some, like A24 and Sony Pictures Classics, are sticking with the existing theater-first model and waiting the COVID lockdown out; says a top Sony exec, “Without theatrical, the business disappears.” Yet some smaller distributors “have seized an opportunity to release their films as digital links, often through art-house and independent theaters that have eagerly accepted a chance to earn some revenue and keep their homebound audiences engaged.” (Alamo Drafthouse, meanwhile, is launching its own streaming platform.) – The Washington Post
As Creatives Move Online During Lockdown, Fans Follow Them To Patreon
“Since mid-March more than 70,000 extra creators have joined Patreon, which allows fans to give monthly payments to artists in exchange for exclusive content or simply out of a desire to support someone whose work they appreciate. The artistic influx has been matched by an equally large increase in supporters. … the number of whom is up 25% month on month. Over the same period, spending by existing patrons has increased by 75%.” – The Guardian
Movie Theatres Can’t Reopen Yet, So They’re Finding Novel Ways To Connect
“The Music Box in Chicago has a kind of tip-line where people can call in and describe what streaming services they have and their programmers will recommend what to watch. It’s been wildly popular and it’s so funny,” she says. “The Brattle in Cambridge, Mass., had a movie trivia night to support them, which became an opportunity for people from all over the country to join each other. Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, N.Y., has been working with their audience to care for them. Calling them on the phone just to make sure they’re doing all right.” – NPR
How The COVID Crisis Is Changing Classical Music Performance (No, It’s Not About Zoom)
Musicians and their audiences may be physically separated these days, but they’re closer emotionally, writes David Patrick Stearns. “The old sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’ — each side with its respective definition of excellence — is now more of a collective ‘us.’ We’re part of the same extended family, because artists are delivering something less filtered, and audiences are listening past questionable sound quality, faulty computer connections, and superficial biases. Listeners are likely to embrace, with fewer or no conditions, whatever the artists have to give us each day. The rewards can be huge.” – WQXR (New York City)