All stories by Douglas McLennan on BroadwayStars

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism) by Douglas McLennan

Companies like Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Spotify, Apple and Google have subsidized what they offer (super-cheap or free content, faster service and better accessibility) to capture audience…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 04:48AM
Sunday, February 11, 2024

Some Thoughts on Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro” Movie by Douglas McLennan

Maestro isn’t really a movie about Leonard Bernstein or his career, or even about music per se. It’s not really a “biopic,” in the traditional Hollywood sense of the word.

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 03:06AM
Friday, February 2, 2024

Is the Universal Translator Finally Here? by Douglas McLennan

We're entering a new age of global communication, and universal translators are only the first step. Avatars and synthetics will be as routine as today's TikTok video filters.

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:06AM
Sunday, January 7, 2024

How to Think About How AI will Change the Arts? by Douglas McLennan

At the moment "how to think about it" may be the most important place to start.

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 09:48AM
Wednesday, November 22, 2023

American Orchestras Could Learn Something from South Dakota by Douglas McLennan

Infinite choice of music in a few clicks sounds like a dream. In reality it can dull your desire and lead to what the social psychologist Barry Schwartz calls the “paradox of choice,” a …

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:42AM
Monday, July 24, 2023

Inflection Point? A Crisis in Paying for Culture by Douglas McLennan

Our consumption of culture has never been higher. So why are culture producers melting down?

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:19AM
Friday, November 25, 2022

Still Amusing Ourselves to Death: Information as Cautionary Tale by Douglas McLennan

It might seem like our current information glut is without parallel, but throughout history observers have worried about the impact of too much information on our ability to rationally proce…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 10:12PM
Sunday, June 26, 2022

UnderTow: What the new Edinburgh Fringe Tells us about a Post-COVID World by Douglas McLennan

How has COVID changed what people want when they decide to put down their screens and go out? We'll explore what Edinburgh thinks it is.  [More]

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 08:33PM
Wednesday, June 8, 2022

The UnderTow: The High-flying Oil Industry fears “Demand Destruction.” Should the Arts? by Douglas McLennan

Oil prices are at a record high. And profits are rolling in. But there's an intriguing phenomenon in the oil industry called "demand destruction." It means when prices get too high for too l…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 01:33AM
Tuesday, May 24, 2022

The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts? by Douglas McLennan

Is it the subscription model that’s not working or is it the way the arts do subscriptions? [More]

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 01:42AM
Sunday, April 24, 2022

This Week’s UnderTow: Why are Police Playing Disney Songs? And Why did this Orchestra Fire its Conductor for… Conducting? by Douglas McLennan

This week's podcast of The UnderTow, ArtsJournal's new weekly podcast, features three stories from the past week. Sometimes stories are not exactly about the things they seem to be about at …

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 03:24AM
Thursday, April 14, 2022

Introducing our New Podcast: The UnderTow by Douglas McLennan

Today we introduce a new podcast -- ArtsJournal's "The UnderTow" - a more or less weekly deeper look at two or three stories from the past week. [More]

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 12:06PM
Saturday, November 6, 2021

Five Post-COVID Arts Observations: #3. The Future is Hybrid? (or Not) by Douglas McLennan

There are plenty of strategic reasons to use hybrid content to further artistic goals that don't have to be around making money. But ultimately the model, whatever it is, has to make sense. …

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 08:03PM
Monday, October 25, 2021

#2. Five Observations about COVID and the Arts: The Great Resignation and Beyond by Douglas McLennan

The arts workforce, and those being recruited into it, is changing. "We’ve never had as many openings at one time. And we recognize that in hiring so many positions at once, we have a huge…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 03:12AM
Friday, October 22, 2021

Five Observations on the Arts 18 Months into COVID: Finances by Douglas McLennan

Many arts organizations are coming out of the COVID shutdown in better financial shape than they were going in. [More]

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 02:03AM
Tuesday, September 14, 2021

ArtsJournal Turned 22 Today: A Chronicle of a Remarkable Cultural Era by Douglas McLennan

Over the past year, while compiling 150,000 stories in the AJ archives, I realized that this is a unique record of an extraordinary period in our cultural history. Sorry – that sounds gran…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:54AM
Saturday, August 28, 2021

Make Google Pay for Linking to Content? Hmnnn. by Douglas McLennan

You might think this is just a journalism issue, but one can draw parallels of paying to read stories to paying for music streaming, which has not proven to "pay off" for the vast majority o…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:54PM
Wednesday, June 9, 2021

How Has Technology Changed Orchestras? — My Talk for the League of American Orchestras Conference by Douglas McLennan

I was asked to deliver a "provocation" for this week's League of American Orchestras annual conference with the prompt "How has Technology Changed Orchestras Forever?" Here's a video of the…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:18PM
Monday, August 24, 2020

Five Things: #1. Business Models and a $9 Billion Idea by Douglas McLennan

We need a significant, stable ongoing source of new funding that is politically insulated and inflation-proof. [More]

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:32AM
Sunday, August 9, 2020

Five Things to Fix in the Arts by Douglas McLennan

The shutdown has suspended usual rules, positions and behaviors, suggesting there may be opportunities to not just rethink but take action. [More]

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:32PM
Monday, May 18, 2020

How Technology is Shaping Opera by Douglas McLennan

Opera America had asked me to speak at their annual conference this year, but of course the conference was canceled and moved online. So I made this video for the online conference, talking …

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 11:54PM
Friday, May 1, 2020

Parlez-Vous Screen? (online arts and other considerations) by Douglas McLennan

So your workplace has shut down (your theatre, concert hall museum, stage, whatever). Now what? Moving online is the obvious play. And in the weeks since lockdown there has been a flood of a…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:48PM
Thursday, April 30, 2020

Arts: Rebuild What? And Why? by Douglas McLennan

You can see this as nothing but loss. Or perhaps some of our most intractable debates are now suddenly shaken free of their old moorings. [More]

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 11:32PM
Sunday, December 29, 2019

Are The Arts To Blame For Donald Trump? by Douglas McLennan

A few months ago I was at a conference of administrators of large arts institutions when a leading researcher in cultural trends made a bold claim: The election of Donald Trump is a result o…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 11:12PM
Tuesday, October 23, 2018

What If Disruption Was Just A Tech Con Game? by Douglas McLennan

The tide has turned on the tech revolution. Over the past year the breathless articles that used to accompany new tech innovations have dried up, replaced with dystopian concerns about the D…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 08:06PM
Monday, July 30, 2018

Classical Music’s #MeToo Stories Are Just A First Step by Douglas McLennan

This week Washington Post arts journalists Anne Midgette and Peggy McGlone published results of their six-month investigation of sexual harassment in the classical music business. Some of th…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 10:36AM
Friday, July 27, 2018

How a Beethoven Tweet Broke Our Twitter Feed (And Other Lessons About Social Media Today) by Douglas McLennan

A few weeks ago we posted a link in ArtsJournal to a piece in the Toronto Star under the admittedly provocative headline: “Time To Retire Beethoven’s Ninth?” In the piece, …

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 03:24AM
Monday, February 20, 2017

Five Story Higlights From The Past Week 02.19.17 by Douglas McLennan

Last Week: Have performing arts centers led us to a dead end?… The new World Trade Center in New York demonstrates much of what is wrong with building today’s cities… The h…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:18PM
Friday, February 17, 2017

Join Us Today For A Livestream Today: Artistic Leadership In A Border City by Douglas McLennan

Following on Joe Horowitz’s essay Lincoln Center Snapshot: Bing, Bernstein, and Balanchine Fifty Years Later and the five responses to his provocation, we’re in El Paso, Texas …

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 04:54AM
Thursday, February 16, 2017

Is The Institutionalization Of Our Arts A Dead End? by Douglas McLennan

In his essay looking back on Lincoln Center on its 50th birthday, Joe Horowitz suggests that the cultural citadel built optimistically to be a launching pad for the American performing arts…

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 10:24AM
Friday, January 27, 2017

Are Orchestras A Ticket Or An Art? Maybe We’re Thinking About The (Made Up) Model Wrong by Douglas McLennan

As recently as 1990, American symphony orchestras accounted for an average of 60 percent of their budgets in earned income. This meant, at the time, that if you weren’t selling enough …

SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 03:04AM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards