“This new paradigm will feature advanced set-top boxes — courtesy of the cable industry’s hush-hush Project Canoe initiative — that will, the cable biz hopes, deliver on its long-touted promise of precisely targeting ads to individuals based on taste and lifestyle just like Internet advertising does.”
Tag: 05.02.08
How The TV Strike Changed Everything
“In profound and permanent ways, the television business has changed since the writers declared pencils down. Network and media agency executives agree that the stoppage was the first line of an entirely new script for the television industry, one which, to borrow entertainment parlance, “reimagines” how TV has been developed, bought and sold for more 50 years.”
Record-Setting Rothko Goes To Qatar
“Qatar’s ruling Al-Thani family is the mystery buyer of Mark Rothko’s White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), 1950, which sold at Sotheby’s New York on 15 May 2007 for $72.8m–setting a record for the highest price ever paid for a work of post-war art at auction. The painting was consigned by David Rockefeller.”
Canadian Government Blows Off An Arts Party
“Why not? Tories don’t like the arts? They don’t like the Governor-General? They want to be back in their ridings campaigning, fearing a snap election? They don’t want to pay for their own tickets? It seems that it’s all that, and more.”
Harry Potter Finally Falls Off Bestseller List
After 10 enviable years of sales, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books have fallen off the New York Times best-seller list for the first time.
What’s Community-Based Art Without The Community?
“One of the questions that perhaps needs to be asked of all projects that put non-artists at their heart is who gets the greatest benefit. Is it the artists (who may be able to work on a scale that would be impossible without community involvement), or the community (who are giving up their precious time for rehearsals and performances when they could be watching Dr Who)?”
Tom Stoppard On The State Of Writing About The Theatre
“Personally I read reviews because I’m interested by them, but they don’t have utility for me. The very act of writing is so enclosed that nothing else, including critics, impinges on the experience. Everything else is shut out except for the line you’re writing. If I have a central belief, it’s that writing has to be a purely subjective experience; you can’t keep a weather eye open for what people are saying, trying to please some ghostly presence looking over your shoulder.”
Why Dance Doesn’t Move Ahead?
“If ballet dancers say they are desperate to perform new choreography, and ballet directors say they would love to give it to them, can it really just be the public’s lack of imagination that keeps our companies confined to such cautious repertoires? Or is it that we need to look to America for better ways of marketing the art form?”
Our Wired World – Can This Really Be Good For Culture?
“As consumers use the internet to isolate and refine their particular interests – whether news and entertainment, or bomb-making and pornography – they create a fragmented world of ‘echo chambers’ isolated from the public space in which a healthy democracy thrives.”
Is Bayreuth Leadership Resolved? Really?
“Katharina and Eva Wagner have fought bitterly over the Festival leadership for many years, and it is common knowledge that there has never been much love lost between them. The likelihood of a harmonious future relationship is slim. Questions could also be asked about their qualifications.”