With pandemic limitations in mind, as of early July, the overall domestic box office has reached $1.05 billion in ticket sales, down 42.3% from 2020 and down 81.3% from 2019. – Variety
Building Audiences
England’s Arts Venues Can Operate At Full Capacity Starting July 19
Just two more weeks, then no more three-foot distancing and no more mandatory masks, said Boris Johnson. – Variety
No Surprise: European Movie Box Office Down 70 Percent Last Year
The European box office plunged 70.4 percent last year, down $6.04 billion (5.1 billion euro) from $8.5 billion (7.2 billion euro) in 2019 to $2.5 billion (2.1 billion euro). – The Hollywood Reporter
Steady And Strong: The State Of Public Media Over The Past Decade
That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Pew Research Center. Results for last year in particular were that terrestrial public radio listenership was down a bit, public TV audience was up quite a bit, and podcasts keep growing. – Inside Radio
Lyric Opera Of Chicago Sees Reason, Will Have Intermissions
About six weeks after announcing that, as a COVID safety measure, it would eliminate intermissions when it resumes live performances — and just over a month after critic Chris Jones issued the cry “Let the people pee without missing a note!” — the company has reversed course. – Yahoo! (Chicago Tribune)
You Might Not Have Heard Of A Big Hit Jesus Show
The show has just arrived on Peacock, but it was a hit before that, garnering about 750,000 viewers for its season 2 opener as the super prestigey Mare of Easttown got 1 million viewers. “Take it from a critic and a Christian with an aversion to Christian entertainment: The show is good. I’d stop short of calling The Chosen a prestige drama, but it looks and feels downright secular.” Production values? Acting? Writing? Good throughlines? Check, check, check, check. – The Atlantic
Are You More A Movie Person Than A Sports Person?
Movies about the Olympics can scratch an every-few-years cultural itch without your having to watch the actual competition. – Today
The French Impressionists Had No Idea They Were Painting Masterpieces-To-Be
Of course they didn’t, even if some of them believed their work deserved that rating. “It’s easy to forget that for most of them at the time, their work was a risk – to create art in the way they felt was right, they needed to make personal and financial sacrifices.” – The Guardian (UK)
Alone In Rome, Before The Tourists Return
Italy was the first to lock down, and one of the hardest lockdowns. “Now most of Italy is in a ‘white zone,’ and museums can operate at their full summer schedule. Still, on a Saturday, I counted four other visitors to the most anticipated show of the year in Rome: ‘The Torlonia Marbles: Collecting Masterpieces,’ at the Capitoline, showcasing a collection of Greek and Roman sculpture unseen for decades.” – The New York Times
West End’s Top Producers Sue UK Government To Get Results Of COVID Pilot Events
“Andrew Lloyd Webber and other impresarios said on Thursday they had started legal action to press Britain’s government to publish research into the safety of holding indoor events during the pandemic. A joint statement from [the plaintiffs], also including Cameron Mackintosh and Sonia Friedman, said the industry had repeatedly urged the government to spell out its reasons for keeping restrictions on audiences in place.” – Reuters
As Viewers Flock To Streaming Video, One Cable Channel Keeps A Devoted Audience: Turner Classic Movies
“The Atlanta-based TCM has long been the sanctuary of classic film on TV, presenting mostly pre-1980 movies commercial-free with a deep respect for moviemaking history going back to the silent film era. … TCM also appeals to an older audience that is more likely to hold onto its cable subscription than younger viewers who quickly adapted to streaming platforms. The channel also connects with fans through live events, cruises, books, an annual film festival and even a wine club.” – Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
If The U.S. Won’t Do Another Federal Theatre Project, The States Should
“With state-based funding for the regional theatre system, we could return to a repertory model with full-time employment for actors and serve our local audiences better than a national program ever could. In doing so, we could establish a secure, socially just work environment for the American theatre artists of the 21st century.” – American Theatre
Screens And Speakers And What we Learned During COVID
Screen nausea and social media compulsions are no joke, but the current self-loathing about the long year of screen time is misplaced. It was not lost time. – Wired
How Movie Audiences Are Different
The movie audience is a singular and enigmatic organism. It can’t really be compared to the audience for live events such as theater, music and opera. – Washington Post
How Many Streaming Services Can One Person Be Expected To Pay For? We’re Starting To Find That Out
“The average number of video streaming services utilized per U.S. user has fallen for the first time, according to technology research firm Omdia. … ‘In the past, many have posited an ultimate limit to the number of services a consumer will be able to manage,’ Omdia highlighted. ‘With U.S. growth stumbling, many will be asking if seven is the new ceiling for video streaming video services (pay and free).'” – The Hollywood Reporter
How Did US Public Broadcasting Become The Institution It Is? It Sure Wasn’t Easy
“As self-evident and uncontroversial as the belief in equal access to information sounds within the noncommercial media sector itself, politically the concept always faced resistance. … Fast forward to 2021, and the origin of public broadcasting looks something like a social movement.” – Current
The Next Streaming Wars Are Coming
Coming to those who are interested in Spanish-language media, to be a little more precise. Disney, Netflix, and Warner Media, and Univision all have a piece of the pie – and are tugging, hard. “It’s easy to see why streamers and studios see a gold mine. Latinos consistently accounted for a disproportionate amount of moviegoing before the pandemic, yet they are severely underrepresented onscreen and behind the camera, including at Netflix” – Los Angeles Times
HBO Max Walks A Tightrope Of Media Rights
Success in streaming, as Netflix has shown, ultimately requires reaching subscribers in every corner of the planet. But taking a streaming service around the world is complicated and expensive. It involves creating locally-sourced shows in multiple languages and navigating regions that don’t have reliable broadband or many consumers with credit cards. For HBO Max, it also means deciding when is the right time to give up revenue from licensing deals. – Los Angeles Times
In Vegas, The Shows Are Coming Back. Will The Tourists Come To See Them?
“The change since last spring, as measured by the return of surging morning-to-midnight crowds, is head-snapping. While just 106,900 tourists visited Las Vegas in April 2020, according to the Convention and Visitors Authority, some 2.6 million people visited this April — a big rebound, but still almost a million shy of what the city was attracting before the pandemic.” – The New York Times
Performance Venues Are COVID-Safe At Full Capacity If Audience Wears Masks: Study
“According to the results, the wearing of masks cuts the spread of aerosol droplets by 99 per cent, with those transmitted also travelling much more slowly. Professor of biophotonics at [University College London], Laurence Lovat, says: ‘Andrew Lloyd Webber is right. If theatre-goers wear appropriate masks and follow other rules already in place, theatres become safe places to go to.'” – WhatsOnStage (London)
Uncertain But Hopeful, Carnegie Hall Announces Reopening Plans
“The upcoming season will be more modest than usual: about 90 concerts, compared with a typical slate of 150, though more may be added depending on the state of the pandemic. With the virus still raging in many parts of the world and variants circulating, Carnegie said it planned to require concertgoers to show proof of vaccination. It has not yet decided whether to mandate masks inside its three spaces.” – The New York Times
How Podcasts Became Substitutes For Friends During The Lockdown
“The number of podcasts … ballooned, filling voids in the professional lives of the hosts and the social lives of the listeners, and in some cases replacing both. There were periods during lockdown where I was hearing more from certain podcasters than anyone else on Earth – even the people I was sharing a home with. But believing that people you encounter through the media are your friends is not a new phenomenon. It is called parasocial interaction, a term coined by sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in 1956.” – The Guardian
‘Why Should The Best Show People Somehow Keep Making The Dullest, Tackiest Hodgepodge Of A Tony Awards Show?’
“Even when not being manipulated by moneybags, the awards have regularly represented Broadway as a neurotic mess: defensive about its marginality, embarrassed by its serious works and insecure about its commercial appeal. … Now is the time for the Tonys to pull their act together.” Jesse Green has a few ideas, and even argues that the recent decision to split the telecast in two could be a good idea. – The New York Times
The Era Of The Big Comedy Film Is Over
TV shows, TikTok, live mini-shows, Instagram Stories, and memes – comedy has changed. Even the second Borat movie, though it was made and was fairly popular, only shows that “the form itself is in transit, evolving and branching out into a multiplicity of approaches that reflect the diverse and pulsating world we now live in.” – Prospect (UK)
Oh, Great — Now Going Back To Movie Theaters Will Become Part Of The Culture Wars
Owen Gleiberman: “To go or not to go? To believe in the primacy of the communal, cathartic big-screen experience or to see it as a stodgy, unhip relic? No one thought this way about the movie theater versus VHS or DVD; the industry wasted no time transforming those technologies into ancillary markets that helped keep movies afloat. But streaming has changed the chemistry. The two radically different ways of experiencing filmed dramatic entertainment (theater vs. home) will now be competing as never before, and in some ways it’s a battle of cachet.” – Variety