National Public Radio’s ouster of Bob Edwards as host of Morning Edition is still being discussed: “In public radio, no less than on the commercial dial, the search for younger listeners keeps executives at their desks deep into the night. And with overall radio listening in dramatic decline in recent years, programmers are constantly searching for something new. That led some station executives to conclude that Edwards’s ouster was all about catering to young listeners.”
Tag: 04.11.04
Defending Canadian Movies…
Last week when word a deal the Canadian Telefilm was making with Hollywood leaked out, there was an outcry. “You may get the impression from this uproar that the Canadian content of our home-made movies, so cherished by our audiences that they account for something less than 1 per cent of the box-office take in English Canada, is about to be deeply compromised.” But it’s not. INdeed it might be a way to improve the Canadian film industry.
Denver: Changing Horses In Mid-Construct
Denver’s major cultural institutions are in the midst of a building boom. But several of those institutions are in a hunt for new top leadership. And that means…
Making The Sausage
Theater people love to talk about “process,” whether it be the actor’s process of developing a character or the director’s process of fashioning a cast, crew, and set into a believable story. But the behind-the-scenes process that goes into creating a single theater season may be the most fascinating process of them all, and for the people who run Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage, it’s a study in compromise and a careful balance between challenging the audience and satisfying the ever-present demand for the familiar.
Split Signal
Ever since classical music station WFLN switched to a rock format in the mid-1990s, fans of classical music and jazz in the city of Philadelphia have had to share a single radio station, Temple University-owned WRTI, which attempts to please everyone with 12 hours of classical and 12 hours of jazz each day. It’s better than nothing, of course, but there’s been plenty of grumbling about the lack of seperate jazz and classical stations in the nation’s 4th-largest radio market. But now, WRTI is planning to begin splitting its signal into two different full-time streams – one jazz, one classical – offering listeners with high-definition receivers a choice of what they hear at any given time.
The Dream and Nightmare Of The Asian Megacity
“The United Nations says that by 2010, some 18 of the world’s 30 largest cities will be in Asia (compared to only three from Europe and North America). In the region’s new megacities, height is might, speed is wealth, density is power, and the skyscraper — that American symbol of modernity — grows on steroids and is colonizing the sky.” Trying to define these supermetropolises as good or bad, dangerous or progressive, is useless, and misses the point in any case. Any organism as huge and complex as a city cannot be reduced to such platitudes, and the startlingly fast growth going on in Asian cities provides plenty for urbanists of all stripes to marvel and shudder at.
The New Graham Devotees
Martha Graham’s dances are hardly what one would call timeless: in fact, many look distinctly old-fashioned in the modern era. So what is it about the mystique of Martha that has made her legacy such a draw for young dancers seeking to make their mark in the dance world? A new generation of Graham proteges gives varying answers to the question, but all speak of a certain “emotional trutfulness” that distinguishes a Graham dance.
Emerson Quartet Wins Avery Fisher Prize
This year, the administrators of the $50,000 Avery Fisher Prize for American musicians changed its rules of eligibility to include ensembles, and the first beneficiaries are the members of the Emerson String Quartet, who will be announced as the 2004 winners of the prize in a Monday ceremony. The group says it will “try to do something creative [with the money.] We won’t just spend it.”
Tracey Emin: I Can’t Get No Respect
“She is the artist the British public likes to laugh at most. Even Damien Hirst’s infamous pickled sharks and cows are treated with more respect. And yet until now Tracey Emin, the creator of ‘that bed’, has accepted ridicule and contempt as all part of being a famous conceptual artist. No longer. Speaking for the first time about her row with a primary school over the sale of a quilt – a row that has seen her branded as selfish and money-grabbing – Emin reveals she has been deeply upset by the onslaught of criticism. Blame for the unpleasant affair, which at one point came down to a physical tug-of-war, lies with the school, the 40-year-old artist claims.”
U.S. Music Sales Bounce Back
“Music sales in the US rose by more than 9% in the first three months of 2004 compared with the same period last year – signalling an end to a four-year dip. The 9.1% upturn in sales of CDs, music DVDs and legal downloads is a ray of light for an industry that has battled online piracy and new technology.”