Is podcasting breaking in to the big time? “Earlier this month, talk-show host Rush Limbaugh began offering podcasts of his shows for $50 a year, and competitors like The Dr. Laura Schlessinger Program may follow his lead. Meanwhile, commercial and public radio stations are trying to figure out where they fit in the podsphere and how they can make a buck by filling up your MP3 player.”
Tag: 06.12.05
Gallup: Americans Don’t Trust Newspapers, TV
American news media are having a difficult time. A new poll says public confidence is falling. “Those having a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers dipped from 30% to 28% in one year, the same total for television. The previous low for newspapers was 29% in 1994. Since 2000, confidence in newspapers has declined from 37% to 28%, and TV from 36% to 28%, according to the poll.”
Minnesota Flunks Couch Potato Test
Minneapolis/St. Paul has consistently lower TV viewership than other major metropolitan cities. “Only 59 percent of us tuned in during weeknights last month, compared with 68 percent in top-ranked Philadelphia, according to a study by Nielsen Media Research. Why? Our region is too wealthy, too well-educated, too wired and too white, researchers say.”
A Wonderful Romance – Gay Romance Novel Looks For Success
Is the gay male romance novel coming into its own? It’s “a world where there are never cowards, only condoms; each of the heroes has a brain, even if it takes until the end of the story for one of them to use it; and the abs, if not tin, most likely resemble iron.” This month, encouraged by successes so far, publisher is “aiming for the big time, with 12,500 copies of ‘Hot Sauce’ in print and fervent hopes that with gay marriage in the news — and legal in their own state — gay men may be more willing than ever to claim their inner Cinderella and read up on Prince Charming.”
Spacey Pulls Out Of Old Vic Production, Fans Protest
Kevin Spacey suddenly pulled out of a production at London’s Old Vic, which he has run for the past year. And ticket-buyers, who had gobbled up £1.2 million worth of ducats “for the cash-strapped Old Vic – a figure almost unprecedented for a straight play in the West End – are unhappy. Still, “espite his critically unsuccessful first season on the South Bank, with unenthusiastic or bad reviews for the first two plays he staged, Cloaca and National Anthems, a recent poll suggests that his support remains solid.”
Wildenstein Sons To Challenge Court Plan To Liquidate Collection
The Wildenstein family has one of the world’s biggest art collections, “worth an estimated €10 billion, and connections that have allowed them to broker some of the Louvre’s biggest purchases.” Now “Alec and Guy Wildenstein, whose father Daniel died four years ago, will challenge a French court ruling in favour of their 71-year-old stepmother Sylvia to break up the huge private collection, believed to include Renoirs, Monets and Manets.”
An Orchestra Goes For Performance-Based Pay
“The Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, one of Japan’s top-tier orchestras, has its own financial challenges, and in its recent negotiations it suggested a radical fix: performance-based contracts, under which musicians’ raises and promotions – or, perhaps, their departures – would be based on “objective” evaluations by management. The criteria for judging the musicians are still being discussed, but in addition to straightforward musical performance, they’re likely to include attendance, onstage manners, teamwork and helping to publicize the orchestra. Current members can elect to remain in the traditional lifetime-employment system, but about 70 percent have chosen the new contracts. That’s no surprise: while poor evaluations could lead to a musician’s contract’s not being renewed, the top salary under the new system is about $72,000 a year versus $62,600 under the old.”
Finnish, the Musical Stars
Finland has become a hotbed of classical music. “The Finns’ recent emergence as a power in classical music is another case in which they have mastered a lingua franca. Defying a trend in many Western countries, where audiences are dwindling and the tradition itself seems in retreat, Finland has in the last 15 years developed first-class classical musicians out of all proportion to its size. Steady investment in music education by the government has created generations of avid listeners and, according to official figures, more orchestras per capita than anywhere on the globe.”
St. Louis Symphony Still Struggles To Get Past Strike
Last winter’s strike by the musicians of the St. Louis Symphony left a lot of hard feelings. Months later, relations between the orchestra and its musicians are still a bit raw. But there’s also perhaps “an even more significant split between the orchestra’s negotiating committee and the officers of the local musicians union.”
Don Quixote – Recreating A Work In Progress
Suzanne Farrell takes another look at Balanchine’s Don Quixote. The piece hasn’t been performed since 1978. “During the 13 years of its life, Balanchine made numerous changes to the ballet, adding dances, taking out divertissements, cutting sections. There never was a true “finished” version, so she has had to decide what to keep, what to cut, what to preserve.”