By Walt Hickey
BroadwayBroadway’s season is kicking off, and theaters have been packed full of star-driven shows, making record revenues. Good Night and Good Luck, which opened April 3 starring George Clooney (who also co-wrote the show), made $3.28 million. That makes it the highest-grossing show on the Great White Way, just $22,558 less than its record-setting gross the week before. It played to over 100 percent capacity, dipping only slightly due to the production’s need to comp some seats to critics if they want to get into the papers. Four blocks away at the Barrymore Theater, Othello starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal brought in $3.1 million and is averaging an eye-watering $378.73 per seat. A production of Glengarry Glen Ross starring Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr and newly minted Oscar-winner Kieran Culkin made $2.1 million in its final week of previews, coming in just behind Wicked and Lion King. Caitlin Huston, The Hollywood Reporter
Hawk-EyeThe NFL announced that it will be making Sony’s Hawk-Eye tech the primary way to measure “line to gain. The announcement usurps the final say that has, since time immemorial, belonged to those two guys holding up poles connected by a chain on the sidelines. The chain dudes will continue to ply their craft — players and coaches do, in fact, need a visual way to understand the sideline. However, the decision on whether or not a ball has passed the “line to gain” will now be handled by the 8k cameras, 6 of which are to be installed in each of the 30 NFL stadiums. Speed was a motivator for the call: the full process takes 30 seconds for the cameras, which saves the 40 additional seconds it requires for those chain guys to hustle in, the ball to be spotted and them to leave. MonarchyA protest of 10,000 royalists in Kathmandu last month disrupted airport operations, prompting a response from riot police when the former king returned from a trip in the west of the country. Nepal has been dealing with corruption, a poor economy and political turnover in its democratic government. The Shah dynasty ruled the country for 240 years, claiming credit for the country’s formation in 1768 and only dissolved in 2008 after the monarchy took that inevitable turn of “a brief period of authoritarianism.” Since then, the country has seen 13 governments in 16 years, and about 1.6 million Nepalese citizens left the country in 2023 to pursue employment elsewhere. This kind of turmoil gets people acting all irrational and musing about monarchy as if it will be the thing that solves their problems.
LatinRevenues from Latin music continue to rise in the United States, though growth does appear to be slowing, according to Luminate. Revenues were up 6 percent in 2024, reaching $1.4 billion, making it the third consecutive year in which the industry made more than $1 billion. That slightly outpaced overall growth in the U.S. market, hitting 8.1 percent in overall shares of the market, only a small increase from the 7.9 percent in 2023. What’s especially interesting is that $354 million of the revenue, or just over 25 percent, came from ad-supported on-demand streaming, which in this case means “ad-free Spotify, YouTube and similar platforms.” For perspective, in the overall industry, that kind of revenue makes up just 10 percent.
HuckleberriesHuckleberries cannot be cultivated or farmed, and must be harvested from the wild, a practice that has become controversial in Washington State’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest. The controversy comes in light of large-scale commercial harvesting and historical rights of the Yakama Nation that tribe members have claimed to be long ignored. According to the Forest Service, commercial pickers take 50,000 to 70,000 gallons of berries from the forest, which can fetch prices up to $200 per gallon. One can get a permit to pick for either $60 for a 40-gallon limit or $105 for a 70-gallon limit. Overall, the National Forest made just $83,445 on 928 permits last season for extractions worth millions of dollars. In a move celebrated by the tribal members, the Forest Service announced it will not issue commercial permits this season. Josephine Woolington, High Country News BridgeA new study out of Johns Hopkins assessed the probability that bridges across waterways in the United States will be struck by a ship at some point. Think the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore bieng hit by a large container ship, after which, it subsequently collapsed. The researchers mined 16 years of Coast Guard data detailing the heading, speed and location of ships in U.S. waters minute by minute; by folding in data on ship aberrancy rate, they figured out when it becomes likely that a ship would strike the bridge after a given period. Some bridges are doing just fine — the Verrazzano in New York would see a collision once every 362 years, the Golden Gate once every 481 years and the Delaware Memorial Bridge once every 129 years. Others are not so lucky; the Huey P. Long Bridge in Louisiana, for instance, appears to be vulnerable, with a collision expected once every 17 years. Jill Rosen, Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering AdolesenceThe limited series Adolescence is shooting up the all-time Netflix charts after becoming a bona fide hit on the streaming platform, notching 96.7 million views on the platform in just three weeks. The 4-part series had 30.4 million views in the week ending March 30, and was in the top 10 in all of the 93 countries that have a top 10. That’s good enough to push it into ninth place on Netflix’s all-time list, which measures 91 days of viewership and would mean that Adolescence has plenty of room to grow. Selome Hailu, Variety and Erik Gruenwedel, Media Play News Thanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Consider becoming a full subscriber today. Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news. Check out the Numlock Book Club and Numlock award season supplement. Previous Sunday subscriber editions: MCU · Fanfiction · User Magazine · Reentry · Panda Dunks · Net Zero · Spiraled · On The Edge · Luggage · The Editors · Can’t Get Much Higher · Solitaire · Posting Nexus · Memorabilia · Drainage Tile · Desert Surfing · Music · Congestion Pricing · Underwater Sound · Hunts Point · Queer Olympics · Energy Drinks · Baseball Movies · Trillion Trees · Risk Aversion ·Packaging · Ice Cores · Stadium Names · Uncertain · Green Homes · Political Future · UFOs · Antarctica Comms · Rot Economy · The Internationalists · Video Game Funding · BYD · Disney Channel Original Movie · Talon Mine · Our Moon · Rock Salt · Wind TechsSunday Edition Archives: 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018
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