Museums on TV: New Ovation Deal; Smithsonian's Report about Showtime Controversy

Given the Smithsonian Institution's admission, contained in yesterday's 70-page task force report on its revenue-generating activities, that the details of its 2006 deal with Showtime Networks should have been fully disclosed from the start to avoid controversy, the nine cultural institutions that have just signed on with Ovation TV should take care to spell out the parameters of their new deal.

The new arrangement involves "a series of collaborations between cultural institutions and the cable arts network to create programming intended to raise the profiles of both partners." But the press release is silent on certain contractual issues:

---Is there any exclusivity involved in this arrangement?

---Are these institutions free to do whatever they want with competing networks?

There's also the problem of access: Showtime is available only to premium subscribers; Ovation is not even on my channel line-up, and I'm in the greater New York metropolitan area (looking directly at Manhattan from my window).

The cultural institutions that have signed on with Ovation are: Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, P.S. Arts (Los Angeles), Museum of Modern Art, Harlem School of the Arts (New York), the New Orleans Center for Creative Artists/Riverfront, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.

Robin Pogrebin's NY Times story today leaves the mistaken impression that the Smithsonian has repudiated its Showtime deal. She writes:

The report...says that, had better lines of communication been in place, the controversial Showtime deal might have been avoided.

The report in no way suggests that the deal should have been avoided. What it says, on page 20, is that the deal was good; the communications were bad:

Had this agreement been better explained and justified to the internal and external stakeholders prior to and just after its announcement, the ensuing months of conflict and overstated concerns may not have transpired. In recent months, it appears that internal and external fears about access to collections have dissipated, and development and implementation of the processes noted below have addressed operational concerns.

You can read the entire Smithsonian report here.