“BBC governors were so concerned at the record number of complaints about Jerry Springer – the Opera that they sought a personal assurance from director general Mark Thompson that it did not breach blasphemy and obscenity regulations.”
Tag: 01.12.05
Classical Music Cuts Crime In London Underground
London’s Underground has been piping in classical music into some of the most crime-ridden stations in the system. “Mozart and Pavarotti broadcast through loudspeakers has resulted in a drastic reduction in anti-social behaviour by gangs of youths. It is not that the music has a soothing effect – the gangs hate it and it has driven them away.”
SF Symphony Gets Major Funding For Multimedia Project
The San Francisco Symphony gets a $10 million grant – the largest in its history for use in ‘Keeping Score: MTT on Music,’ the orchestra’s multimedia effort, started last year, to build new audiences for classical music. The gift will be delivered once the Symphony raises $10 million during the next three years. “Keeping Score” was initiated with a two-part national television show last year, which featured Thomas and orchestra members talking about Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony and then performing the piece.”
2004 – Great Year For Concert Business
America’s live-concert business did well in 2004. “The concert business not only survived 2004, it hit a new high of $12.8 billion in revenue, according to a report released yesterday by the trade publication Pollstar. That figure is a 12 percent jump over 2003, when the industry took in $12.5 billion”
Proposed California Arts Budget Lowest Per-Capita In US
The California Arts Council has a new director – Muriel Johnson, a veteran Republican politician and arts advocate from Sacramento. But she won’t have much to work with. The $3.2-million arts budget governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed Monday means that California again will likely rank last in the nation in per-capita state spending on the arts.
Is Google’s Library Deal Legal?
There’s one problem with Google’s deal to put online millions of library books. “It is not at all clear that Google and these libraries have the legal right to do what is proposed. For work in the public domain, the right is clear enough. But for work not in the public domain, Google’s right to scan — to copy — whole texts to index is uncertain at best, even if it ultimately makes only snippets available. When permission has been given by the copyright holder, again there’s no problem. But when permission has not been secured, the law is essentially uncertain. If lawsuits were filed, and if Google and its partner libraries were found to have violated the law, their legal exposure could reach into the billions.”
Reinventing Book-Of-The-Month
The Book-of-the-Month Club is reinventing itself, updating to try to compete in internet age. “The popularity of Internet booksellers and the ubiquity of heavily discounted hardcover books at warehouse clubs and mass-market retailers have combined to make the Book-of-the-Month Club – and other general-interest book clubs – far less important in the selling of books in the United States.”
Split Of The Titans
Bob and Harvey Weinstein are leaving Disney. But the split is a complicated one, involving scores of projects and relationships that muct be untangled. “Disney executives and representatives of Miramax, which is owned by the Burbank-based company, are expected to discuss later this week or next which creative projects the Weinsteins, who have been in testy negotiations over their contracts, will be allowed to take with them as they exit Disney. ‘This may be a divorce, but it’s a divorce with children’.”
Chorus Line Back On Broadway
Sixteen years after it closed a record-setting run at the Shubert Theater, Michael Bennett’s landmark musical about the lives of Broadway dancers is to be restaged with the help of three of the original production’s creators: the composer Marvin Hamlisch, the designer Robin Wagner and the choreographer Bob Avian.
Mississippi Libraries Un-Ban Stewart Book
A Mississippi public library board has reversed its decision to ban Jon Stewart’s book “America” after waves of protest. “The board voted 5-2 Monday to lift the ban, and the book was returned to circulation in the system’s eight libraries Tuesday. “We have come under intense scrutiny by the outside community. We don’t decide for the community whether to read this book or not, but whether to make it available.”