Keeping An Eye On The Prize: More On Contemporary Classical Music, Literature, And Art; 'Radio Strategy'; And Civilizational Growth and Decline

"On Thursday November 13, 2008 at 5:30pm, the chairman of the Concertzender Nederland organisation came to report to the employees and volunteers that the Dutch Public Broadcasting System (NPO) plans to pull the plug on the Concertzender. In the very near future, all funding will be cut. In a studio in the MCO building in Hilversum, Bierman informed the employees and volunteers present that the NPO no longer considers the Concertzender suitable for the public broadcasting roster. The Concertzender is primarily interested in content – music – and not in the size of the audience. Despite over 135,000 Internet listeners per month - and we're not counting the listeners via the cable, Digitenne or RadioOnDemand – the NPO's board of directors doesn't consider the Concertzender to be a good fit with their radio strategy, which primarily targets market share.We are hereby informing our 6,000 donateurs, 125 volunteers, and thousands of interested parties and collaborators in the music sector of their decision. The music sector will be very interested to hear about this. For it will have an impact there as well. The Concertzender records around 250 concerts every year and support and promotes musical innovation. We have received masses of letters of support from all over the world (see http://czmoetblijven.blogspot.com for examples).The future? It's uncertain. The Concertzender hopes to continue to fulfill its role as a music broadcaster by and for the music sector. Without NPO financing, if necessary, although we feel that the Concertzender is exactly the kind of broadcaster that the public broadcasting system was designed to include. We would therefore welcome a continued role within the NPO, but one that acknowledges the identity and value of the Concertzender as a whole."

Via On An Overgrown Path, Norwich, United Kingdom

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Photo credit: (c) Anton Henning, Berlin and Manker, Germany; and antonhenning.com. 2008. Copyright controlled. All rights reserved. With thanks.

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Anton Henning "German Enlightenment", Zach Feuer Gallery, New York.

[Pan Cogito owns a huge conceptual photograph by Henning inspired by a manuscript page to Schubert's Trout Quintet found in his grandmother's home in Wannsee, Berlin.]

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Roberto Bolaño 2666 Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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My post of last Friday morning -- on opera -- was hacked ...