Broadway shows winning Tonys Sunday night got a nice bump at the box office Monday. But “according to preliminary numbers, the celebrities did almost nothing to increase the flat overnight national ratings, showing only a slight increase of about 160,000 viewers. In years past, a number of factors have been blamed for the low ratings, including competition from the N.B.A. playoffs and new episodes of hot HBO shows like “The Sopranos” or “Six Feet Under.” This year, however, the show had no such competition, but still drew only 6.6 million viewers, up 2 percent from last year’s audience of about 6.5 million viewers.”
Tag: 06.07.05
Space Station Looking For Art
Managers of the International Space Station are commissioning art for the station. “People associate the space station almost exclusively with scientific work,” said Nicola Triscott, director of the science-art agency The Arts Catalyst, which has been commissioned by the European Space Agency to make a six-month study of practical proposals for art in space. “But the agency believes very strongly that the cultural world should have a say in the future of space exploration.”
A Formula For The Perfect Sitcom
Researchers have come up with a formula to write the perfect sitcom. “There are long-standing golden rules for sitcom, but our findings bring them down to this single equation. Comedic value is determined by multiplying the recognisability of the main character (R) by their delusions of grandeur (D). This is added to the verbal wit of the script (V) and the total is multiplied by the amount someone falls over or suffers a physical injury (F).”
Serra’s New Masterpiece
Michael Kimmelman writes that Richard Serra’s new installation at the Guggenheim Bilbao is “one of the great works of the past half-century, the culmination of a remarkable fruition in Mr. Serra’s career. It rejuvenates and pushes abstraction to a fresh level. And it is deeply humane, not least because it counts on individual perception, individual discovery.”