Go to the pub? We'd rather see the opera
In the biggest survey of its kind, conducted by the Office of National Statistics for the Arts Council of England, it has emerged that participation and appreciation of the arts are more popular than sport and are widely indulged in across the social spectrum...according to the survey almost 90 per cent of English people attend some sort of art-related venue in a year...A day-to-day involvement with the arts appears to be such a core activity that it is not seen as a luxury...Armchair consumption of the arts is a staple activity
Mind you, you'd never guess from studying the media, where news bulletins and News 24 have their own dedicated Sports newsreader, and where minority sporting interests regularly hit the front pages of newspapers and Arts rarely do. And the newspapers and TV think politicians are out of touch. Pot meet kettle...
I think for all their talk of diversity the media in this country is controlled by a certain sort of nihilist who wants to spend his entire adult life apologising for his prosperous upbringing, fee paid education and opulent salary, and mixes exclusively with clones, rather than considering the tastes of the poor sods who do the unglamorous jobs and pay his salary, or the millions of older people (ie older than 23) who are not in thrall to the plastic-celebrity-consumerism-as-happiness culture. Besides, they're all so off their heads on coke they long ago lost the power of intelligent thought.
A couple of years ago I read an article about a local paper in Yorkshire, where the editor decided to strip out all the lifestyle articles and pseud-celebrity puffs, and instructed his reporters to go out and find news to report on. Sales soared...
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