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We're proud to again handle PR for the Christopher Awards.
We've been working with The Christophers for more than 25 years, to honor the best creators of TV, film and books for adults and for children.
Click here for info on this year's winners.
We hope to celebrate the 75th year of Christopher Awards next year with a live awards ceremony.
Happy birthday to the girl from Ipanema
We used to be big movie-goers. We'd often see a few movies each month. In fact, sometimes we'd do a movie marathon, seeing two or even three movies back-to-back at the multiplex.
And then came Covid.
Movies or binging series on TV became the "night out," even though it was just on our couch at home.
We were thrilled when movie theaters started to re-open, although we went to the movies with some trepidation -- always being careful to keep our masks on throughout the film. Our first post-Covid movie theater experience -- in Hollywood -- was just us, our son and one stranger in the entire theater. Even now, with Covid pretty much behind us, when we do go to the movies were are among just a handful of people in the audience.
These days, though, we don't find ourselves going to the movies as often as before.
Going to the movies used to be "an event" or a special night out. But now that theaters have finally re-opened, we just don't go out to the movies as much as before.
And it's not just us... Some Google research shows that movie ticket sales have a long way to go to fully recover from Covid. In 2019, 1.2 billion movie tickets were sold, bringing in more than $11.2 billion. During Covid in 2020, those numbers dropped to 216 million tickets worth $1.9 billion -- the lowest since the 1970s.
Nash Information Services, publisher of "The Numbers," estimates that 747 million movie tickets will be sold this year, bringing in $11.2 billion. (Keep in mind that the average ticket price is now $10.45 nationally, compared with about $3 back in the 70s.)
I think people want to go back to the movies, but a question these days is -- do they need to?
During Covid, studios released films via streaming, so they still made money, while theaters sat empty.
Studios also made films, series and mini-series for viewing on HBO, Showtime, Netflix, Amazon Prime and other paid or streaming venues.
There's so much good stuff that you can watch on your home screen, and more people are watching at home. The economics make sense, too. Why pay $13 - $15 per ticket (in the NYC area) when you can rent a new film for $10 - $20 and have a living room full of people watch?
A case can certainly be made for going to the movie theater -- the shared experience, the big screen and big sound system, the fresh theater popcorn.
But is that enough to bring people back to the movie theater?
We'll see.
Happy birthday Quincy Jones
When CDs hit the market in 1982, many thought it would spell the end of vinyl records. And it almost did.
Some thought vinyl LPs provide a superior sound than CDs, although I don't agree. With CDs, you don't get the rumble or scratches and pops that you often hear on vinyl
CDs can hold more music, so you don't have to get up to turn a record over after 15 or 20 minutes.
To me, the biggest drawback of CDs was the scaling down of the album cover art.
Even as CDs took over the market, vinyl maintained a loyal following, especially with fans of indie and punk bands. But the numbers tipped heavily in favor of CDs, and by 1987 CDs were outselling vinyl.
But there always remained a group loyal to vinyl.
The Recording Industry Association of America released sales figures a few days ago, and last year, for the first time since 1987, vinyl outsold CDs. The RIAA says 41 million vinyl albums were sold last year, compared with 33 million CDs.
Part of the change comes from the fact that there aren't many "record" stores anymore. Sam Goody, Tower Records and others are long gone and Barnes & Noble, which used to have a decent music selection, now has maybe one rack with a handful of CDs and some vinyl. The records, which now are made on a thicker sheet of vinyl, are priced way above CDs -- averaging in the mid-$20 range and more.
I have hundreds of vinyl records, almost all dating back pre-CD. Almost all of my music purchases since the mid-80s have been CDs and, on the rare occasions that I buy recorded music now, it's on a CD.
Clearly, I'm the exception.
The jazz world is a bit bluer today, as we learn of the passing of sax man Wayne Shorter.
He played with all the greats, from Art Blakey to Miles and later with jazz-fusion band Weather Report. I played his tunes on my jazz show on college radio back in the late '60s.
Click here to listen to him, playing with Herbie Hancock, Joe Chambers and Reggie Workman, from one of his albums recorded in 1966.