Tag: 05.01.00

CONTROL YOUR BRATS!

New York Magazine theater critic John Simon loses it at a performance of “Music Man” and screams at the parent of noisy kids to shut them up. “Simon said he ‘smelled trouble’ as soon as he saw several young children – between the ages of 4 and 8 – sitting in front of him.” – New York Post

PULLING THE PLUG

A dispute over transmission fees between Time Warner and Disney led the cable giant today to pull the plug on seven Disney-owned ABC stations around the country. Instead of regular programming, about 3.5 million homes were treated to a full-screen message that “Disney has taken ABC away from you”…and during sweeps week, no less. – CNN 05/01/00

  • FOOD FIGHT: No deal, no stations, as of midnight Sunday. – Washington Post 05/02/00

  • CLASH OF THE TITANS: ”It’s one behemoth clashing with another for positioning.” – Boston Globe 05/02/00

  • ONLY THE BEGINNING: Our viewing choices are shrinking because of media mergers. – Orange County Register 05/02/00

  • MONOLITHIC MANEUVERS: How does the high-stakes tug-of-war between the multimedia monoliths bode for the future of broadband Web-based news and information? Will Time Warner’s pending merger with AOL “create an impenetrable barrier to non-AOL Time Warner companies interested in participating in looming interactive TV technology”? – Time 05/01/00

  • BULLY TACTICS? “It’s unique in the history of cable,” said ABC spokeswoman Julie Hoover of the Time Warner dispute. “I can only liken this to the behavior of a schoolyard bully. They will beat up the kid in the schoolyard and they don’t care if the teacher sees it. They don’t care that the other kids don’t like it, they just do it because they can.” – Salon 05/02/00

SOUND SCIENCE

First there were silents, then talkies, and eventually 3D, Dolby, and digital. Now a Savannah, Georgia screenwriter is developing a new film-sound technique called “Second Sound” that allows people sitting in the same movie theater to hear different sounds and frequencies at the same time. – Yahoo! (Reuters) 05/01/00

EBAY NATION

Artists have discovered the charms of the E-Bay auction site. Not just for buying material or selling work, but for finding collaborators and using the site itself as an artform. Like any good conceptualist, these artists know that “the art primarily resides in the idea and the often unconventional medium or approach, rather than the execution of the art object.” – MediaChannel 05/01/00

TURF WAR

Public Radio International is suing Minnesota Public Radio over the latter’s purchase of “Marketplace.” MPR has been expanding its empire, and will control PRI’s two top programs. PRI is concerned that Minnesota Public Radio will start competing with it as a program distributor. – Current 05/01/00 

SELLING HERITAGE

The Chinese government tried to stop Christie’s auction house from selling two sculptures at auction in Hong Kong. The sale went ahead anyway, and the pieces were bought by a Beijing man, who says he bought them for “the Chinese people.” According to China’s State Bureau of Cultural Relics, “both sculptures came from a set of 12 bronze animal heads that adorned the Zodiac Fountain at Yuanmingyuan, or the Old Summer Palace, which was looted by British and French troops during the second Opium War in 1860.” – China Times

Chinese angry at auction house over auction. – New York Times

POWER IN KNOWLEDGE

Several projects are underway to put online records of art sales. Once, collectors had to rely on what dealers and auction houses told them about a painting’s history. Now, at the click of a button, they can do their own research and perhaps establish a partial, and sometimes a complete, provenance. – The Telegraph (UK)

TODAY MELBOURNE, TOMORROW…

  • Deutscher Menzies controls the Melbourne auction business and has a leg up in Sydney. “Once the saleroom is established nationally, it will take on the big two [Sotheby’s and Christie’s] on their home turfs in London and New York. In December Menzies made a bid for the world’s third oldest auction house, the London-based Phillips. He was one of a group of shortlisted bidders but lost out to French financier Bernard Arnault, head of the luxury products group LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. – The Age (Melbourne)