Is The Internet Endangered?

Big media and telecommunications companies are considering plans that would dramatically change how the internet works. “Under the plans they are considering, all of us–from content providers to individual users–would pay more to surf online, stream videos or even send e-mail. Industry planners are mulling new subscription plans that would further limit the online experience, establishing “platinum,” “gold” and “silver” levels of Internet access that would set limits on the number of downloads, media streams or even e-mail messages that could be sent or received.”

Gottlieb: Where’s Wheeldon?

Christopher Wheeldon is unquestionably a talented choreographer. But, wonders Robert Gottlieb, “why don’t his ballets—and we’ve seen a lot of them by now, a dozen or so for City Ballet alone—add up to a coherent artistic statement? Where is the major work that will identify his essential qualities and justify the hopes everyone has placed in him?”

CBS Jumps Into Download Business

But instead of making its shows available on iTunes, the network is selling them directly on its website. “CBS would be the first broadcast network to sell its shows via its own Internet storefront. The move signals that CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves believes the network is a potent enough brand that it can go it alone — without Apple Computer Inc.’s popular iTunes software and website — and thus not have to split the spoils.”

More Post-Mortem On The Frey Affair

“The Publishing industry bears the weight of contradictory expectations: It must make money, as well as maintain the illusion that it’s one of the last bastions of highbrow culture. Which leaves book editors and publishers with the impossible task of creating products that will both sell at Costco and serve as intellectual currency at Upper West Side dinner parties.”

New London Arts Center Takes It To The Streets

Bob Geldof is in on a new arts center in Camden Town in the north of London. “There is a buzz about the Roundhouse that is reminiscent, to those of us who were kids at the time, of Camden Town in the Sixties and Seventies: a place where our world was remade in a purple haze of invention. The risk is high when you let the streets in, but what other way is there to understand what’s going on?”

Why UK Orchestra Players Are Quitting

“One could argue that in this country we do not get the orchestras we deserve: we get far, far better than that. And it is the players who are subsidising us. String players are the rank and file of the orchestra, the infantry. Of the 600 or so orchestral string players in full-time work across the country, few earn more than £25,000 a year. Many are on much less. Orchestral rates of pay in western Europe are high, where a premier-league player can earn up to £50,000. In America, where there is no state funding for the arts and orchestras rely mainly on private sponsorship, the average starting salary is $58,000 (£32,805), more than one and a half times that of British recruits. But it’s not just the money and lack of career advancement that prompts some players to hang up their bows…”

Academy Awards Still A Tough Scene For Women

“You know it’s a bad year for women when none of the best picture nominees even features one in a lead performance. Both Good Night, and Good Luck and Munich present almost entirely hermetically sealed male universes, while Brokeback Mountain, Capote and Crash feature women as ignored wives and gal pals… [Historically,] only 7% of the 250 top-grossing films were made with female directors. No woman has ever won the best director Oscar; only three have been nominated.”

Can They Order Viewers To Watch It?

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is ordering Canada’s commercial broadcasters to increase their investment in homemade drama from an average of 3.3% of gross revenues to 6% over a five-year period. “Similarly, the CRTC is now requiring the networks, through marketing and scheduling, to boost the viewing of English-language drama programming so that by 2008-2009, Canadian productions will enjoy at least 16.5 per cent of the networks’ total drama viewership.”

Prestiwhointhewhatnow?

It’s rare that a new word can be coined, popularized, and made an official part of the language through the efforts of a single individual. But that hasn’t stopped Professor James Vanden Bosch of Michigan’s Calvin College from pursuing a one-man crusade to get his favorite made-up word – presticogitation – into the Oxford English Dictionary. Vanden Bosch has actually done a remarkably good job of convincing his studnts over the years to use the word in their writing, but the folks at OED are a much tougher sell.