HARD NEWS

Art The Meadows Museum will have a grand opening of its new home on March 20-31. The $25 million dollar building is 6 times the size of the old one. That means not only more room for their great collection of Spanish paintings, but more room for their extensive collection of Goya prints.We salute (DMN) --- In related Museum news, the Rothko Chapel in Houston has been added to the National Register of Historic Places, a designation usually reserved for 50+ year old buildings - the Rothko is only turning 30.

Corp. Art Feds have (against my better advice) approved the AOL/Time Warner merger. Quickly the giant co. began to fire 2,000, redundant, employees. Must have been tough firing all those folks. Perhaps staring at an artist's rendering of the new $1.7 BILLION AOL/Warners headquarters in NYC - due to be finished in 2003 -cheered them up enough to get them through any crisis of morality! --- Warners along with Sony, Vivendi, EMI, and BMG are the 5 co's that run all music. But how big is big? Here's an example - BMG (not the largest music co. by far) owns RCA, Arista - you've heard of those 2 - and 200 more labels! YIKES!

Film Loews Cineplex, the biggest movie theater chain, is closing or selling 112 more of its theaters - that's about 675 screens or 23% of their total. They had already shut down 34 theaters with 164 screens. (Bloomberg News)

Architecture What's happening in housing in Britain may soon be happening across the US. It is estimated that Britain needs approximately 4.4 million more homes. The population isn't increasing, but the number of divorces is, and when a family splits up it needs 2 homes. Can we house everyone, do it in a livable way and still eliminate urban sprawl? That's the challenge for architects of the future.

Media A report by Thomas Patterson, Harvard Univ., says that "soft news" the more sensational look at personalities that has become the staple of modern journalism, is actually driving U.S. readers and viewers from broadcast and print news..."And negative coverage of politics and government is having an impact on American's attachment to politics... But a lot of the negative journalism is not deep investigation at all ... There is dramatically more 'if it bleeds, it leads' a lot more celebrities ... The question is how far can you take those sorts of things?" The researchers surveyed 511 people during a 2 year period ending last Nov. (Reuters) (I call it a police gazette mixed with film ads)

Feds & Corp. Art 8 Shady doings in DC. Remember that dream about micro-broadcasting? Well forget that. The Feds are way too busy with shady business! The new administration means new bodies in - old ones out. Let's take a look: Joel Klein, former chief of the Justice Department, who fought to breakup Microsoft, wasn't too busy to line up his new job at BMG, one of the Corp. 8. And they swear it's NOT because they want him to help them finagle a deal to merge with EMI , one of the other 5 music companies. This is cashing in on a government job - pure and simple, and if its not illegal, it should be ... And who's the new FCC head? It'd be nice if it was someone who had a clue about any aspect of the job. But that would stand in the way of using your position to get jobs for your kids, in this case Colin Powells son Mikey. One biz spokesman said, "Mr. Powell (Mikey) "has been a consistent voice advocating market competition over regulation ." Uh, not a lot of talk about a variety of voices is there. I guess one must ask how would that support big biz? (Bloomberg)

Music Napster is shut down for being music pirates, no one in the media mentions the price fixing scheme that the music companies suing Napster, pleaded 'no contest' to. And speaking of real pirates, police raided CD pirates here in Dallas. They were making compact discs (with nice covers) for about 50 cents each . Then selling them to distributors for $3 each. So how much are you paying for CD's? And who's the pirates? "Everything today is so synthetic and manufactered - just like it was before, back in the disco days. Now it's corporate rock." Joey Ramone.

Books Amazon.com is laying off workers too - 1,300. The jobs are going from Seattle to N. Dakota and India. Now for some salt in the wound. Amazon is requiring the laid off group to sign separation agreements as a condition of getting extra severance pay and other benefits. Those agreements include clauses against disparaging the company to the news media or 'any individual." So I guess I'll have to do it for them. This behavior stinks and so does the management at Amazon.com for doing it! (WSJ)

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