The move adds a billion more potential customers to the market for the audio streaming giant, which will now be available in 178 countries and will support more than 60 languages. – Variety
Building Audiences
Governor: NYC Movie Theatres Can Reopen
Governor Andrew Cuomo said “cinemas in the city will be permitted to operate at 25% capacity, with no more than 50 people. Moreover, other safety measures such as masks, social distancing and heightened sanitizing measures will be required.” – Variety
Women Are Getting Stronger, Deeper Roles In A New Generation Of Bollywood Movies
Some of the change is due to a worldwide audience. Netflix and other streaming services “have a certain sensibility that they want to see in the kind of narratives that they are promoting on their platform. That has been a great boon for women filmmakers, women writers, women behind the camera and in front of the camera.” – The New York Times
The British Family Providing Lockdown Relief With Musical Parodies
The Marsh family of Faversham are dealing with Britain’s lockdowns by performing parodies. “This six-voice choir, with its sweet harmonies and the occasional wobbly note, is creating songs that dramatize the mundane moments of lockdown life, from too much screen time to the horrors of remote learning.” – The New York Times
The Show’s Going On Down Under
This sounds wildly exotic and dangerous to most theatregoers in the U.S. right now: “A few days ago, Kylie Estreich went to a theater in Sydney to see a Broadway show. In person. With hundreds of other people. She showed her ticket, went to her seat, and sat elbow-to-elbow with her masked mother on one side and a masked stranger on the other.” I’m sorry, what? That’s right, Australia has it figured out. – Washington Post
Nielsen Will Begin To Track Diversity Alongside Ratings Numbers
The initiative combines entertainment metadata with Nielsen’s audience measurement data. It’s designed to equip content creators, owners, distributors and advertisers with data around onscreen diversity and representation to enable more inclusive content. – Los Angeles Times
Research Paper Linking Violence To Video Games Is Retracted
“Zhang and his co-authors reported high levels of statistical significance for their finding, but the reported differences in the effects of violent games versus nonviolent games were too small for that high statistical significance to be possible.” – Science
Keeping Up Live Performance As The World Goes Virtual
“We have a total commitment to live performance. That’s what we do. We’re not a film company,” says the director of the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia. What’s more, “we really wanted to maintain work for artists as much as possible, as well as our staff, … at a time when they really didn’t have a lot of options.” And so, with safety measures in place, since this past fall the Annenberg has been streaming performances in real time from its stage. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
How Can ‘Our Town’ Still Feel Utterly Contemporary, 80 Years After Its Opening?
Howard Sherman, author of a new book about the play: “It’s a play that people think they know. People want to paint it as this old-fashioned love letter to the past. And that’s not what it is at all.” – NPR
Malls And Nail Salons Are Open, But Not Museums?
Dear Gavin Newsom, this makes no sense at all. Signed, a lot of LACMA and other art-lovers in California. Weirdly: “LACMA can open its Resnick Pavilion gift shop but not the galleries within the same Resnick Pavilion — even though the two share a front door and a ventilation system. The same goes at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, where you may visit the gardens with an advance reservation, then mill around the indoor gift shop at your leisure.” – Los Angeles Times
Empty Movie Theaters Are Being Rented Out To Video Gamers
The cinema chain Malco has been doing this in six Southern states since November, and the South Korean chain CGV started it in January. With prices for a small group of players running around $100 for two hours, it’s not close to making up for the lack of moviegoers, but it’s at least a bit of income. And the gamers seem to love it; said one, “The sound quality is particularly amazing. The sound of the gunshots is just so vivid, and when something flew directly at me from the screen I even screamed.” – BBC
Orchestras Must Overthrow The Tyranny Of Subscription Programming, Says NY Times
Anthony Tommasini: “[The format] locks them into standard-issue, week-after-week programs loaded with the classics and sprinkled, at best, with unusual or new choices. … Why can’t orchestras be nimble and respond to sudden inspiration, or current events? If the Pittsburgh Symphony has a hit with a premiere, why must audiences in other cities wait years to hear it?” – The New York Times
Facing Another COVID Summer, British Theatres Are Building Outdoor Stages
Social distancing is easier outdoors and there’s more air circulation, not to mention the fact that, as one director puts it, “Outdoor arts is more accessible because it’s in democratic open spaces.” So companies across the UK are getting ready to perform outside their buildings, many for the first time, as soon as weather and health regulations permit. – The Guardian
In Britain, Thousands Protest The Idea Of Closing To The Public A Library That Was Left To The Nation
The Wallace Collection “is in internal consultation” about closing the library and archive that was left to the country in 1897. Is that even legal? Will anyone notice during the pandemic? (More than 10,000 people certainly have noticed.) – The Guardian (UK)
Ballet Dancers, Getting Real (And Sometimes Really Funny) On TikTok
If Instagram is about selling your moves – and your clothing line, your toe shoe line, your skin care routine, etc. – then TikTok is about being yourself. Kind of. “Casual, confessional and playful, TikTok offers a release for ballet dancers, particularly students, who spend their days chasing impossible perfection. TikTok is a place to laugh about the impossibility, rather than obsess over perfection.” – The New York Times
Binging Or Drip Drip Drip? The Pros And Cons Of Streaming
Are we really just pleasure-seeking audiences looking for that instant hit of media indulgence? As the effects of lockdown and zoom fatigue have exposed, society seems to be increasingly experiencing media fatigue. – The Conversation
Should Prime-Time TV Series Work In COVID Storylines? Or Is That The Last Thing The Audience Wants?
“In [writers’] rooms all over the internet, hospital dramas, first-responder shows, situation comedies and courtroom procedurals were having similar debates. To ignore the events of the spring and summer — the pandemic, America’s belated racial reckoning — meant placing prime-time series outside (well, even more outside) observable reality. But to include them meant potentially exhausting already exhausted viewers and covering telegenic stars from the eyes down.” – The New York Times
Could We Really Revive The Federal Theatre Project? How Would That Work In 2021?
The short answer is that it couldn’t work the way it did in the 1930s: the legal and theatrical landscape then was too different. (For a start, there was no such thing as not-for-profit theatre.) But there are certainly possibilities; here are a few of them. – American Theatre
The Times’s ‘Five Minutes That Will Make You Love {Piano/Sopranos/String Quartets}’ Series? It’s Working
Says classical music editor Zachary Woolfe (who came up with the idea in the shower), “It has doubled our audience for classical music. It’s gratifying that whatever we do, people are willing to explore and be into it.” – The New York Times
Swedish Film Festival Takes Social Distancing To Extreme — Plays To One Viewer
“Over the course of the coming week, it will hold screenings in two urban venues for just one festival attendee. And it has also sent a single viewer to a tiny, barren island in the North Atlantic to watch the 70 films in competition — alone.” – The New York Times
After The Storming Of The Capitol, Classical Music Feels More Vulnerable Than Ever
Of course, this feeling (and the lack of funding, and alarm about orchestras’ survival) started long before the pandemic, and long before the assault on the Capitol Building. But: “The trials of the past year have brought forth many of the qualities we already admired about classical music: its resilience, resistance, persistence and endurance. But permanence? I’m not so sure anymore.” – Washington Post
Beaming Music To Potential Extraterrestrial Life
The SETI Institute is ready to take music to Mars, or wherever. While it’s a listening project, it’s also now a beaming project. A founding astrophysicist and a musician “have devised the ‘Earthling Project’: a call to people everywhere to upload snippets of song that [the musician] plans to meld into a collective human chorus. An initial composition will be launched into space this summer, inscribed on a virtually indestructible disk alongside Wikipedia and the Rosetta Project, a sampling of 1,500 human languages. Future plans and dreams include an eventual dispatch to Mars.” – The Economist
New Design For COVID-Safe Pop-Up Theatre
The Vertical Theatre, as it’s called, will be modular, with a capacity of 1,200 to 2,400, seated in small groups separated (if necessary) by clear screens. The structure has a roof, but the sides are open to allow airflow. The UK-based creators hope to have at least one Vertical Theatre hosting shows later this year. – WhatsOnStage (London)
Hollywood Waits With Its Blockbusters. Streaming Is Still A Risky Path
Even as the studio insists that its streaming strategy is a one-off response to the pandemic, it might not be able to rebuild those bridges. Seeing the backlash is just another reason the rest of the industry’s major players continue to hold off from anything so drastic. Patience is hard, but it’s Hollywood’s surest path to profitability. – The Atlantic
Cable TV Cord-Cutting Accelerates During Pandemic
In the interim, expect a flood of cable programming to start migrating over to streaming in anticipation for the day when cable is no longer a viable platform for networks to reach audiences. – Axios