“NPR is projecting that podcast sponsorship revenues will surpass revenues from broadcast sponsorships next year for the first time. … The network has budgeted about $55 million in corporate sponsorship revenues from podcasts in fiscal year 2020.” NPR CFO Deborah Cowan described podcasts as “[a] huge return on investment for us and a major growth engine for our business.” – Current
Turkey’s Television Epics Are Conquering The World
“Thanks to international sales and global viewership, Turkey is second only to the US in worldwide TV distribution – finding huge audiences in Russia, China, Korea and Latin America.” Reporter Fatima Bhutto talks to people at the center of the Turkish TV industry about why these series appeal to worldwide audiences (and why the English-language market is an exception) and how the shows were a huge hit in the Arab world until, one day, they were pulled off the air. – The Guardian
First Arrest Made In Major Old Masters Forgery Ring Case
“There has at last been an arrest in a high-profile string of suspected Old Master forgeries uncovered in 2016. An Italian painter, Lino Frongia, 61, was taken into custody in northern Italy earlier this week, while an arrest warrant has been issued for French art dealer and collector Giulano Ruffini, who sold the works in question.” – Artnet
How Country Music Became The Heart Of Nashville
Nashville attracted—first downtown, because that’s where the Opry was located, and then on Music Row—a creative community, and that creative community feeds off of itself. I teach at Belmont College, and my students are always saying, “Where I come from, I’m the only person that writes songs; I’m the only person that plays the guitar. I get here and everybody writes songs and everybody plays the guitar.” It either inspires you to get better or causes you to go home, and that’s been a key right there. – CityLab
A Paris Theatre, Closed For Two And A Half Years For A $35 Million Renovation, Is About To Reopen
This isn’t just any (massive) theatre renovation. “It was in the Châtelet where the artistic revolutions and innovations of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes were first seen; here where Mahler, Strauss and Tchaikovsky conducted; where Josephine Baker, Cole Porter and Juliette Gréco all sang.” Now a British artistic director, the first woman in the theatre’s history, leads the Châtelet as it prepares to rejoin the cultural life of Paris. – The New York Times
Not Everything Glittered In The Netherlands’ So-Called Golden Age, Says Museum
The Amsterdam Museum said on Thursday that staff were banned from using the term to describe the 17th century because “the term is strongly associated with national pride because of prosperity and peace but ‘ignores the many negative sides of the 17th century, such as poverty, war, forced labor and human trafficking.'” There’s blowback, of course, and national pride, but the museum is sticking to its principles. – Deutsche Welle (AP)
If You’re Trying To Break An Addiction, Are Books Prescribed?
Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations is repetitive, redundant, with reformulated ideas in every chapter – but sometime it works. (At least once you’re already also in rehab.) – LitHub
Baltimore Symphony Pushes Season Opener Back By A Week Amid Labor Dispute, But Musicians Play A Free Concert Anyway
The season opener was pushed from September 14 to September 21, though the musicians of the BSO, not under the name of the BSO, played a free concert on opening night at a different venue. The problem with the new opening date? “No further bargaining session have been scheduled, according to Brian Prechtl, co-chairman of the Baltimore Symphony Musicians Player Committee.” – The Baltimore Sun
Science Is Deeply Imaginative And Creative
Why is this such a secret? “Without the essential first step, without a creative reimagining of nature, a conceiving of hypotheses for what might be going on behind the perceived surface of phenomena, there can be no science at all.” – Aeon
Gender Bias In Museums Goes All The Way Down To The Fossil Collections
Oh, you thought it was just painting collections, or the sculpture garden? Nope: “Gender bias in favor of males extends to fossil and museum collections of mammals.” – Hyperallergic
MoviePass, Too Good To Be True, Has Finally Died
The promise – unlimited films for $10 a month – went far beyond its founders’ capital and far beyond what the market could support. But for a limited time in 2017, MoviePass was poised with millions of customers and a demand for Netflix-like experiences at theatres. And indeed, it rewrote the rules, forcing cinema chains like AMC, Cinemark, and Regal to create subscription offerings in order to keep customers loyal. – Los Angeles Times
The Hidden Box Of Dr. Seuss
Theodore Seuss Geisel died in 1991, but his widow was cleaning out a closet in 2013 when she came across a box of his unpublished, and some unfinished, manuscripts. Or, as the Times headlines it, “Yes, They Found It in a Box.” – The New York Times
Los Angeles Opera Opens Without A Resolution About Placido Domingo
Here was the situation the day before Saturday’s opening night: “With Domingo staying away from Los Angeles while an internal investigation is underway, the company pushed ahead Friday on season-opener plans with its general manager absent and rumors swirling about whether he will step down.” But of course, the show must – and did – go on. – Los Angeles Times
Biographer Jean Edward Smith, Who Brought Grant And Eisenhower Out Of Obscurity, Has Died At 83
Smith not only cleared up the reputation of President Ulysses Grant – showing that “Grant’s poor reputation as president had been fostered in part by biased graduate students at Columbia University who wrote the first studies of Reconstruction” – but restored to prominence the contributions of John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. (And he also wrote a scathing biography of the 43rd president, George W. Bush.) – The New York Times
Ireland Gets A New Museum Of Literature ‘In A Battle For The Soul Of Dublin’
Well, that’s poetic, and sounds incredibly Irish. The director of the new Museum of Literature Ireland says, “We’re in competition with a lot of venues backed by private drinks companies, with all their marketing budgets.” And, says the writer, “He’s right, in Dublin, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s all about the distilleries, and the Guinness Storehouse.” No longer. – The Irish Times
The Royal Visit In The New Downton Abbey Movie Is Easy Peasy Compared To Reality
For one thing, there’s a limit to what you can portray on screen (who knew?): “The film depicts only a fraction of the staff required for similar occasions, as they would simply not fit on the screen, said Alastair Bruce, the historical adviser on both Downton Abbey the movie and the show.” – The New York Times
Study Shows That Gendered Discrimination, And A Lack Of Parental Support, Create Massive Barriers For Women Theatre Designers
Sometimes you just need a study to back up what seemingly everyone (at least the women) already knows: “The fields of design, production, and technical theatre are the most male-dominated,” and the reasons? Er: Ninety percent of respondents “reported having experienced a negative work environment, gender-based harassment, and/or pay disparity,” especially in lighting and sound design. – American Theatre
A Knife-Wielding Attacker Has Severely Damaged A Painting At The Pompidou
The painting, by Daniel Buren, is described as “a cotton canvas with white and red vertical stripes,” and the attacker was being held for psychiatric evaluation. – BBC
Anne Rivers Siddons, Author Of ‘Peachtree Road’ And Other Books Whose Subject Was The New South
Siddons was an advertising copywriter before her buddy Pat Conroy, author of Prince of Tides, urged her to write about Atlanta – which she did. But that wasn’t her only topic. “‘The South is hard on women,’ she told People, ‘partly because of the emphasis on looks and charm. No matter what I did, I always ended up with this hollow feeling. … That’s why I wrote: I am writing about the journey we take to find out what lives in that hole.” – The New York Times
Should Ghost Writers Speak Out Against Their Subjects?
“It’s like a lawyer: if you find that the person you’re representing is a murderer you can’t then go around bewailing the fact you defended them – that was your job.” – The Guardian
YouTube Says It Will Crack Down On Manipulation Of Music Charts
This form of advertising lets the advertiser, like the artist or the label, play a shortened version of a music video as an advertisement in front of other videos. Under some conditions — like if a YouTube user interacts with the video or watches it for a certain amount of time — it would count toward the video’s overall view count. – TechCrunch
Dvořák Was Sure ‘Negro Melodies’ Would Be The Foundation Of American Classical Music. Why Did It Remain So White?
There was a point at which a number of African-American composers were writing serious, important work, writes Joseph Horowitz. “Racial prejudice, personal and institutional, obviously inhibited the potential success of a Dett, Dawson, Still, or Price. But a subtler prejudice was aesthetic.” – The American Scholar
After 40 Years, ‘For Colored Girls’ Returns, As A Celebration And As A Weapon, To The Theatre Where It Was Born
Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf “has been part of the canon since it became a Broadway hit in 1976. Still, [the play] doesn’t get a lot of professional productions; it’s been much more a staple of college theater. … But at a moment when race and gender are so prominent in the tumultuous civic dialogue — and when black playwrights, particularly women, are pushing both the content and form of contemporary American drama in new directions — the time seems right to revisit Shange’s text.” – The New York Times
Why Did American Classical Music “Stay White”?
Dvořák predicted that a ‘great and noble school’ of American classical music would arise from ‘Negro melodies.’ But the black musical motherlode migrated to popular genres; American classical music stayed white. The reasons are both obvious and not. – Joe Horowitz