“Ontario’s artists and arts organizations are essential players in Ontario’s new creative economy. Investments in the arts help to stimulate economic development, strengthen tourism to the province and create jobs.” The extra funding brings the government’s annual bankrolling of the council to nearly $60 million for 2009-2010.
Tag: 04.26.09
Local Newscasts – More News, Fewer Viewers
“Local stations now average a record 4.6 hours of their own newscasts per weekday, according to a survey of about three-quarters of the nation’s TV newsrooms conducted for the Radio and Television News Directors Association. Sharp cutbacks in ad spending makes these newscasts far less profitable, the same issue bedeviling newspapers and prime-time entertainment. Yet news costs less than alternatives like syndicated newsmagazines or court shows.”
David Attenborough Leads Winners At Bafta Awards
The British Academy Television Awards, held at the Royal Festival Hall and hosted by Graham Norton, provided a night of surprises that saw most of the favourites fail to win their categories.
Reconsidering What Babies Know
“Scientists have begun to dramatically revise their concept of a baby’s mind. By using new research techniques and tools, they’ve revealed that the baby brain is abuzz with activity, capable of learning astonishing amounts of information in a relatively short time. Unlike the adult mind, which restricts itself to a narrow slice of reality, babies can take in a much wider spectrum of sensation – they are, in an important sense, more aware of the world than we are.”
Do E-Readers Wreck The Literary Culture?
“The publishing world is all caught up in weighty questions about the Kindle and other such devices: Will they help or hurt book sales and authors’ advances? Cannibalize the industry? Galvanize it? Please, they’re overlooking the really important concern: How will the Kindle affect literary snobbism?”
London’s West End Discovers Gay Plays Bring In The Crowds
“Gradually, gay productions have taken a stronghold over ticket sales to an unprecedented level. Nicholas de Jongh, theatre critic and writer of Plague over England, believes theatre producers may have at last realised gay plays do bring in audiences.”
Another X-Men Controversy: Final Movie Version Same As Pirated Film
Even though Fox said “shortly after the film leaked that the pirated copy was substantially different from the actual movie, including being ‘about 10 minutes shorter,’ people who’ve now seen the finished film are saying it is — gulp — exactly the same length as the pirated copy.”
Vinyl Makes A Comeback
“Between 2003 and last year, more than 3,000 record stores closed in the U.S. Today, there are 185 record stores in the L.A. area, down from 259 at the beginning of 2007. But as mass marketing of LPs faded, some listeners began rediscovering vinyl. It’s not just older fans who grew up with the decades-old format who attest to its tangible pleasures. Younger listeners raised on torrent files can see LPs as a kind of talisman too.”