“‘When I get in in the morning I will check our YouTube hits before I check our overnights [ratings],’ said Ben Winston, the man behind Corden’s hit The Late Late Show. ‘The overnights just tell us who managed to stay awake. The YouTube hits tell us which bits flew.'”
Archives for August 2016
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.30.16
TV Dying, Video Streaming Surging – So This Is How People Are Getting Their News (Uh-Oh)
A flood of stories this week show how TV is dying and video is on the rise. You think changing audience behavior is tough on arts organizations? Try it when you’re a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate like NBCUniversal Comcast or Verizon. … read more
AJBlog: diacritical/Douglas McLennan Published 2016-08-30
The Revelation in Four “Women Modernists”
The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach has, under director Hope Alswang, strived to increase the exposure to art by women. It is, for example, known for … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2016-08-30
Thomas Chapin on film, with Trombari in Normal IL
Glenn Wilson, a terrificbaritone saxophonist and flutistbased in Normal, IL, is also a major mensch. … read more
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond Jazz Published 2016-08-30
Tasty details
And so, about Wagner’s orchestration … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-08-30
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TV Ratings For MTV Awards Plummet 30%. But Streams Hit 68 Million
“Ratings for Sunday’s broadcast of MTV’s Video Music Awards plummeted, drawing an audience of 6.5 million viewers, about a 34 percent drop from last year’s total of 9.8 million.”
Competition Director: Music Competitions Are Evil
“The idea of a string quartet competing against another string quartet is perverse, and we go into this knowing it’s a strange paradigm. Like carbon credits in the energy sector, we offset what is inherently problematic with a range of programming and events that make it worthwhile.”
Data Show That MFA’s Might Not Be Worth The Cost
“There is hope for those who hate school: Despite the widespread perception that contemporary art is dominated by an MFA mafia, nearly half of the figures on our list of 500 successful early-career artists either did not have an MFA, or didn’t study art academically at all.”
This Week In Hollywood History: “Wizard Of Oz” Munchkins Were Paid Less Than Toto The Dog
“In 1938, the Munchkins were paid US$50 per week, about US$900 in 2016. Meanwhile, Toto and her trainer earned US$125 per week, which would now equate to about US$2,100 per week. The Munchkin cast never even saw their names in the credits.”
The Idea Of Multiple Universes Is A Poorly Thought-Out, Faith-Based Mess
Sam Kriss: “You might not like what I’m about to say about the multiverse. But don’t worry; you’ve already had your revenge. If there are an infinite number of parallel universes, there will be any number of terrible dictatorships, places where life has become very difficult for people who like to string words together. Somewhere out there, there’s a society in which every desperate little essay like this one comes with a tiny, unremarkable button: push it, and the author will be immediately electrocuted to death.”
John Cage’s Lifelong Struggle To Earn Money
Frustration is present in Cage’s missives to orchestral and museum directors around the world as he struggles to earn a living and be taken seriously as a composer. For decades, he was his own booking agent and asked people to help underwrite concerts. As well, he pleaded valiantly trying to establish a center for new music at Cornish School, Bennington College, and Mills College—all for naught. Tellingly, he wrote to young composer, “I never made enough money (from my music) to live on until I was fifty. Interrupted my music in order to do odd jobs in order to eat, etc.”
The Extraordinary Detail Of Rembrandt’s Etchings
“In this video from Christie’s, we see contemporary printmaker Alexander Massouras analyze the diversity of Rembrandt’s lines and how they create different textures in the same work of art – something Rembrandt was a master at. We also get to see the etching process firsthand.”
Mounting Losses: Almost One Million Viewers Cut Pay Cable TV In The Latest Quarter
All told, 812,000 pay TV subscribers cut the cord from April through June of this year, according to research firm SNL Kagan. That’s up from the industry’s loss of 625,000 in the same quarter a year ago.
Enlightenment Philosophers Posed Questions About The Modern World (We’re Still Trying To Figure Them Out)
“Modernity cannot be identified with any particular technological or social breakthrough. Rather, it is a subjective condition, a feeling or an intuition that we are in some profound sense different from the people who lived before us. Modern life, which we tend to think of as an accelerating series of gains in knowledge, wealth, and power over nature, is predicated on a loss: the loss of contact with the past.”
Why The Age Of The Jingle Is Over
“Despite its effectiveness, the jingle has become a relic of the mid-20th-century commercials it once dominated.” (Even Oscar Meyer has retired its two classics.) “Meanwhile, marketers are focusing their efforts on licensing existing music from recording artists. … What killed the jingle? It owes its demise not only to shifts in the advertising business but also changes in the music business, and how the two industries became more entwined than ever.”
Six Tips For Surefire Creative Success
“As far as I’m concerned, what you create in a 30-seat, hole-in-the-wall improv theater in Phoenix can be far more meaningful than a mediocre sitcom being half-watched by seven million people. America doesn’t need more stuff. We need more great stuff. You could make that.”
After 400 Years, Giordano Bruno Is Still A Free-Speech Hero
“Go to Campo dei Fiori in Rome on 17 February and you will find yourself surrounded by a motley crowd of atheists, pantheists, anarchists, Masons, mystics, Christian reformers and members of the Italian Association of Free Thinkers … In the four centuries since he was executed for heresy by the Roman Inquisition, this diminutive iconoclast has been appropriated as a symbol by all manner of causes, reflecting the complexities and contradictions inherent in his ideas, his writings and his character.”
Ballet For The Blind In Mexico
“Teachers and advocates say Psicoballet, like most forms of dance, improves balance, posture and mobility, while also boosting self-esteem and reducing anxiety and depression. According to estimates, the Cuban dance therapy has benefited over 20,000 people in the last four decades and has spread to 17 nations, including Mexico, where it arrived in 1984.”
An Enormous New Museum Near The Great Pyramids
“The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), a gateway to the history of the pharaohs under construction outside Cairo, is attempting to do the impossible: hold its own next to the pyramids of Giza. Egypt’s ministry of antiquities hopes the gargantuan complex, designed by architects Heneghan Peng, will be built by the end of 2016, paving the way for a 2017 ‘partial opening’.”
‘Why We Never Die’: An Atheist Philosopher Explains How He Realized That Death Is Not The End Of Existence
Gabriel Rockhill: “Since I recognized eternal transcendence as nothing more than a comforting illusion, the only thing left was my finite life in the here and now, which was destined to disappear forever in an instantaneous blackout. It is now patently unclear to me, however, that we ever actually die in this way. Our existence has numerous dimensions, and they each live according to different times.”
Why Holograms Of Dead Performers Weird Us Out (But We Keep Watching Them)
“Simultaneously here and gone, holograms are stand-ins for all things virtual, harbingers of a ‘mixed reality’ in which the real and the simulated have been integrated seamlessly. … In reality, however, holograms have mostly been gaudy stunts … still abut the uncanny valley, displaying a body that is there and not there, alive and dead. Something about it doesn’t quite compute.”
In The Live Storytelling Scene, The Storytellers Are The Last To Get Paid
“Mortified, like The Moth, Upright Citizens Brigade, and even TED Talks, is one of the hundreds of live events around the world that have sprouted up during an era in which experiential entertainment, or the IRL economy, were supposed to grow more cherished (and more lucrative) … [But] live events exist in the same way many independent publishers exist – on a shoestring budget in which the performer is usually the last to be paid.”
Cast Of ‘Fun Home’ And PFLAG Compare Notes On Coming Out
“‘We thought they could learn a lot from professional actors about public speaking skills,’ said Drew Tagliabue, the executive director of PFLAG NYC, an organization for family members of gay and transgender people. The group runs the Safe Schools Program, which sends those emissaries into classrooms to talk about coming out. … But what was planned as a class about how to hold onto an audience became something different.”
‘At A Critical Crossroad’, Pittsburgh Symphony Posts $1.5 Million Deficit
The phrase came from PSO president Malia Tourangeau, “[who] expressed confidence the symphony could get back to black ink, [although] she said it faces two challenges this season that will cost it $1.2 million
You Can Now Get Free E-Books On The New York Subway
“Subway Reads will last longer than a summer romance, but not much longer. It was intended to promote something that will not disappear, something that transit officials see as a milestone in the digital age: Wi-Fi service in 175 underground stations.”
Tchaikovsky, Meet Hubble: It’s Not Your Father’s Outdoor Classical Concert Anymore
“Summer symphony audiences are supposed to be easy. Just give them pleasant weather, a nice picnic, craft beer, the 1812 Overture with a few cannons … If only.” David Patrick Stearns looks at some ways – high-tech and low-tech – that classical groups are engaging summertime audiences.
She’s Only The Fourth Living Writer To Be Published By The Library Of America
“The Library of America usually restricts itself to Melville, Twain, Hawthorne and the other distinguished dead. But a handful of times it has been so sure of a novelist’s importance that its austere black volumes started appearing while the writer was still alive. Eudora Welty, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth got the call. Ursula K. Le Guin is now on this very short list.”
How Justin Peck Turned ‘Rodeo’ On Its Head
“I usually don’t work with music that has already been choreographed (especially not a work that is historically iconic), but I had an intuition that there was room for an entirely alternate exploration of the same piece of music. … I deliberately wanted to invert the conventional ‘romantic ballet’ setup.”