“Fueled by a growing sense of desperation, networks are inserting games, quizzes and mini-dramas into commercial breaks. They’re incorporating more product pitches into programming. Two experimental programs without traditional commercial breaks will premiere this fall. NBC has even called on Jerry Seinfeld for help. This is all being done to stop viewers with DVRs from fast-forwarding through advertisements, or to circumvent those that do.”
Tag: 05.29.07
Atlanta Mag Picks Up Journal-Constitution Books Editor
“We had planned to expand our books coverage and were looking for an editor, and when we heard Teresa was available, we called her right away. Books and authors are a mainstay of our content and important to our readers. We have supported the Southern literary tradition throughout the magazine’s 46-year history.”
Talent Shows Dominated This Season’s American TV
This past year, 6 of the top 10 shows on American television were talent shows — American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. “Five years ago, 5 of the top 25 shows were comedies; today, just two are. Reality shows, as you’ve probably heard, are also on the decline: this past season only Survivor broke the top 25, and it’s nowhere near the top 10.”
Bookseller Burns His Books In Protest
When a Kansas City bookseller decided he wanted to thin out his collection of thousands of books, he found out he couldn’t even giv them away. Libraries and thrift shops said they were full. “So on Sunday, Tom Wayne began burning his books in protest of what he sees as society’s diminishing support for the printed word.”
A Tale Of One Spoleto?
Is it time for the two Spoleto Festivals to reunite? “The festivals previously worked together on productions, but that ended 14 years ago in 1993 when Menotti left the American festival in a dispute over money and his successor.”
The Broadway Musical’s “Awakening”?
“Though they disagree on specifics, for the most part these critics have been asking: Is no relief to be had from the parade of staged films, Disney spectacles, European pop operas, and nostalgic jukebox musicals? Is the only alternative a plethora of Golden Age (read: Rodgers and Hammerstein) revivals, not always better the second time around?” And then comes “Spring Awakening”…
The iPod Generation – Shutting Out The World? (Not)
“To see the iPod as an agent of isolation rather than a symptom of, or a clever adaptation to, that isolation is to confuse cause and effect. When I was in college, I heard almost all of my music on stereos in friends’ dorm rooms and apartments. Few of my students today have that luxury; they simply don’t have the time. So maybe we professors can change our perspective somewhat and see in those white iPod earbuds a symbol not of willful retreat, but of community deferred.”
In Our Responses To Art, The Unconscious Is Key
“The connections that paintings and dance performances, movies and novels and music make to us beyond our conscious perceptions of them are primary and transporting. Our unconscious, deep-seated responses are what bring us back to the arts for more and more, nourishing and renewing us just as food and air and water do. At the same time, we’re carried away from our sensory and analytical selves, lifted or plunged into a web of emotion and association, a fretwork of glinting filaments radiating out in so many directions.”
As Roundabout Grows, So Does Competitors’ Anger
“The Roundabout Theater Company, the largest nonprofit group rolling dice in the Broadway casino, is adding a fourth house to its empire. The plan has outraged many of the company’s commercial competitors, who are further peeved that the Roundabout will almost certainly open the new space with a revival of its smash 1998 production of ‘Cabaret.'”
Novelists Head Off To The Bank, Notebooks In Hand
“Why has investment banking, instead of soldiering in Iraq or drug abuse, become the issue of the day for talented young American novelists?”