New York City: Encyclopedia II - New York City - Media and the arts

New York City - Media and the arts

Because of its sheer size and cultural influence, New York City has been the subject of many different, and often contradictory, portrayals in mass media. From the sophisticated and worldly metropolis seen in many Woody Allen films, to the chaotic urban jungle depicted in such movies as Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, New York has served as the unwitting backdrop for virtually every conceivable viewpoint on big city life. New York’s portrayal on television is similarly varied, with a disproportionate number of crime dramas taking place in the city despite the fact that it is one of the safest cities in the United States.

New York is the nation’s number-one media market with nearly 7 percent of the country’s television-viewing households. Three of the Big Four music recording companies have their headquarters in the city. One-third of all independent films are produced in the Big Apple. More than 200 newspapers and 350 consumer magazines have an office in the city. The book publishing industry alone employs 13,000 people. For these reasons, New York is often called "the media capital of the world."

The city boasts over forty daily hometown newspapers in several different languages, including such national heavyweights as The Wall Street Journal (daily circulation of 2.1 million) and The New York Times (1.6 million), and America's oldest continuously-published newspaper, The New York Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton. The city also has several alternative left-leaning newspapers with strong reputations, including the New York Press and The Village Voice. The conservative New York Sun was founded in 2002. A 1991 study by New York University identified a vibrant ethnic press numbering eighty foreign language daily and weekly newspapers in the five boroughs. These papers, in languages ranging from Korean, French, Arabic, Spanish and Mandarin, to Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Portugese and many others, serve New York's diverse immigrant communities. The city also boasts several highly respected magazines with national profiles, including The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and The New York Review of Books.

New York is home to an influential and nationally significant non-profit broadcasting sector. WNYC, New York's flagship public radio station formerly owned by the city government, has the largest audience of any public radio station in the United States and produces several news and cultural programs for international syndication. WFMU in Jersey City is considered by music industry insiders to be one of the most influential open-format radio stations in the country. WBAI in Manhattan is one of the few socialist radio stations operating in the United States.

New York City also has studios, and is the home and broadcasting capital for the four major U.S. television networks, ABC, CBS the Fox Network, and NBC, as well as news organization CNN, and while the local film industry is dwarfed by that of Hollywood, its billions of dollars in revenue make it the second largest in the nation.

With its connection to media and communications and its mix of cultures and immigrants, New York City has had a long history of association with American music. The city has served as an important center for many different genres of music ranging from Big Band Era and jazz, from Punk Rock to Goth and Hip-hop (the latter of which is generally acknowledged as having originated in the Bronx around 1973).

The East Village and Lower East Side continue to shine as the city's premier destination for music (rock, blues, jazz, dance), art (mixed media) and indie theater (experimental, off-broadway.) From CBGB's to LaMama Theater to the Amato Opera House, this area is famous for having a "venue on every block." New York is also home to the controversial talk show host Howard Stern.

The city's vibrant visual art scene gave birth to such giants as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein, who defined the American pop art movement. Abstract expressionism, which developed in New York in the post-World War II period, became the first truly original school of painting in America. The New York artists who defined this style, including Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, were known as the New York School.

New York has also long been an African-American cultural center, with such significant writers as Langston Hughes during the Harlem Renaissance to artists like Run-D.M.C., who pioneered rap music.

New York has also been the setting for countless works of literature, many of them produced by the city’s famously large population of writers (including Jonathan Franzen, Don Delillo, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Lethem, Thomas Pynchon, Susan Sontag, and many others).

See also

• List of books set in New York City
• List of New York City newspapers and magazines
• List of New York City Television and Film studios
• List of television shows set in New York City
• List of movies set in New York City

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Media and the arts", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki