Today he sees what the older generation of musical writers have been up to lately and compares their work to the latest blockbusters including
Posted in General on 04. Aug, 2010
Today, he sees what the older generation of musical writers have been up to lately, and compares their work to the latest blockbusters, including Rent (right).. FOR MANY, Christmas has become a crassly commercial, TV-dominated festival. But for some, it is still the time of year when we celebrate the arrival of the Blue Peter annual. In Annual Delights (9pm R2) Hugh Dennis surveys the history of the annual, from its Victorian origins to the first recognisably modern children’s annuals. More sophisticated pleasures with the return of Book, Music and Lyrics (10.45pm R3), Robert Cushman’s intelligent look at the world of musicals.
No other publication is campaigning on behalf of London at the moment.”. Rents are high and it’s hard to get around, and that can put you off. We have to be writing about that, about transport, rents, unscrupulous landlords, how to get your deposit back. If there’s a new gadget shop on Ken High Street, for instance, we need to write about it.”"There’s also the reality that it’s difficult to live in London, particularly for people in their early twenties. It may have been, in part, a media creation but it took two American publications (Newsweek and Vanity Fair) to realise that London was the centre of cool again.News will help, but so will what he dubs “service journalism” – specials on specific areas of town, cheap eats, best bars and so on. “In my opinion a lot of editors care about it, but decide that somehow it’s a bit boring for the reader, when in fact that’s precisely what they want to keep.”A former features editor of TV Times and Options, Mayer, 34, launched Inside Soap magazine in 1992, took it from monthly to fortnightly, before going to Australia where she was editorial director of the antipodean equivalent of Sugar.”Londoners don’t all live in Notting Hill, work in advertising and earn 50 grand,” she says “Not everyone goes clubbing or to the cinema They are eating, drinking and shopping We need to reflect that without dumbing down.
If there has been a criticism of the UK magazine in recent years it is that while it has been an excellent cultural handbook – often the first and most comprehensive word on what’s new and where it can be seen – it has not necessarily reflected London life in the way that the American title smells of Manhattan. Its consumer section needs sharpening (“We screwed up on this whole wallpaper, interior design boom”), its writing made more accessible (“for the benefit of the readers, rather than ourselves or other critics”).Above all, he says, Time Out London must learn from its younger sister in New York which, after just over three years, is selling 85,000 copies a week, and is close to breaking even. “But it needs a change, and the best way to do that is from outside. It just needs that fresh infusion of personality to wake everything up a little bit. Everyone interviewed said all the opening pages needed to be radically changed – we need to reflect more urgently what’s happening in London.”Specifically, Elliott would like to see its news coverage expanded and infused with the campaigning zeal that the Standard under Max Hastings appears to have misplaced.