“Nearly 20% of Broadway theater tickets are now being purchased by solo attendees — double the rate from just a couple of years ago, according to audience data for the 2024-25 season from the Broadway League.” And one theater owner, ATG Entertainment, is tapping into that crowd with a “Solo Seats” initiative. - NPR
Every month, in an American Legion hall or women’s center (anywhere but a theater) in Los Angeles, Public Assembly presents three 12-minute plays that it has developed over the previous four weeks from pitches submitted from the audience at the previous month’s show, which is advertised only by word-of-mouth. - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
It’s South Florida Public Media Group versus a South Florida NPR school board affiliate, playing out both at the FCC and in the Miami-Dade County Court. - Inside Radio
“Black people and people with Tourette’s have been grappling with the ugly language and the fallout from a night that was supposed to be a celebration.” - The New York Times
“If you're going through all the trouble to create what I assume will be hundreds of logos by the time the games roll around, why would you not brand LA28 using 'LA' as a customized emblem? Why is it only the 'A' that changes out?” The answer may surprise you. - Torched LA
At a St. Petersburg bookstore, Lauren Peace, an enterprise equity reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, moderates conversations about a selected story among its author and community members. The idea is not just to discuss the story’s substance, but to give readers a behind-the-scenes look at the reporting process and decision-making. - Nieman Lab
“Podcasts have officially overtaken AM/FM talk radio as the more popular medium for spoken-word audio in the United States, according to Edison Research’s Share of Ear survey.” - TechCrunch
“The strictly disenchanted world, where nothing exists but physical processes describable without metaphor, and even consciousness is just a material problem waiting to be solved, can be a desiccated place. It keeps heart and mind on inadequate rations.” - The Guardian (UK)
“When the mood and choreography strike, Kansas City Ballet Artistic Director Devon Carney invites a few folks to perform on stage as supernumeraries. That’s a fancy term for extras—usually peasants—who mill around and have deeply animated conversations with their supernumerary neighbors.” - KC Studio
For Spencer Richardson, who finds, repairs, and sells tape players, “his customers include older baby boomers and Gen X‑ers nostalgic for the players of their childhood, but most have been millennials like himself, drawn to something tactile and analog.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)
One British producer in a year in which exactly one British actor was nominated in the two major acting awards: “The Baftas fall between two stools: it’s both a British awards show and an Oscars bellwether. It makes sense to do both, but it’s a real dilemma.” - The Guardian (UK)
Is it all about popularity? What about when a network drops every episode at once? Does a series need to have characters who might grip an audience, or a dense plot? The NYT editor in charge of recapping has Thoughts. - The New York Times
“Browsing Letterboxd, you find an eclectic range of tastes, tones and approaches to movie-watching, a buffet of high and low, mainstream and esoterica. … If Rotten Tomatoes has become a tool of Hollywood’s homogenizing marketing machinery, Letterboxd is something else: a cinephilic hive buzzing with authentic enthusiasm and heterogeneous tastes.” - The New York Times Magazine
This Super Bowl was “the first with A.I. taking center stage—a revealing gametime moment for the tech as it confronts investor anxiety, broader fatigue, and fears of impending economic crisis. ...The real twist is that consumers seem to loathe this marketing ploy.” - Slate
“We are supposed to read triptychs from left to right: Adam and Eve → sexy fruit playground of jubilant behavior → decay and hell. ... But the middle panel, where the temptation is happening, is so fun and funny.” - Paris Review
