:Archives (May 23, 2003)

Friday May 23

McCartney In Red Square

"Sir" Paul McCartney -- still hard to say the full thing -- is finally getting a chance to sing Back In the USSR in Russia. He will be headlining a concert in Red Square that shows just how far the old Soviet Union has come in a mere decade. As the Moscow Times explains:

Recordings by both the Beatles and McCartney's now defunct 1970s band Wings were banned by authorities during the Soviet era. . . . Though the Beatles never performed in the Soviet Union, before their breakup in 1970 the band's enormous popularity coupled with its illicit status here spawned numerous rumors that a Moscow gig was in the offing. According to one such rumor popular in the early 1970s, the band had at one point traveled to the capital but was not allowed to leave the airport, where it was said to have given an impromptu show. Another rumor had the band playing a secret concert for a select audience of Soviet-era top brass.

Update:  More than 20,000 people attended the concert, including Russian President Putin.

 Posted by glenn at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)

The PVR Revolution Is Real

When they burst on the scene three years ago, digital video recorders, also known as personal video recorders (PVRs), were a novelty that many said could not last. But now that TiVo has far exceeded market expectations and is aproaching cash-flow positive performance (TiVo Exceeds Estimates as Loss Narrows), there's good reason to believe that a fundamental shift is occuring in entertainment. Just as iTunes and MP3 players have changed audio from an album-based business to a playlist-based business, so too has TiVo made it possible to watch only the shows one wants when one wants to watch them. antennaball_sm.jpgThere's no such thing in a PVR world as "tuning in" to a particular show, as everything you want is on the hard disk. Advertisers say they don't like it, but I think that, like VCRs, this technology will increase viewership by making the broadcast schedule irrelevant. If you watch more shows because you don't need to be tied to the clock, you will inevitably watch more commercials, too.

 Posted by glenn at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)