Events Of National Importance Research Articles

Keeping it free: Sport television and public policy in Australia

This article addresses issues surrounding changes in television in the digital age, focusing specifically on questions of cultural citizenship as they relate to sport on television. It considers the curious neglect of sport in the Australian Government’s 2020 ‘Media Reform Green Paper: Modernising television regulation in Australia’, especially given its focus on the current problems of free-to-air (FTA) television and the importance of sport to it. In Australia, as in many other countries, there is some legislative protection to enable sport ‘events of national importance and cultural significance’ to be broadcast without charge to whole national communities, thereby preventing their ‘siphoning’ by subscription television providers. These regulatory arrangements have come under increasing pressure, including from screen-based content providers offering over-the-top (OTT) internet-enabled, on-demand streaming services. The article considers the public policy and social equity ramifications of regulating screen-based sport in this dynamic media environment. It is argued that there is a strong case for an anti-siphoning list covering selected live sport events to be maintained, revised as necessary and protected from circumvention in an era where FTA television remains a popular, reliable and widely accessible media technology that has minimal barriers to viewing citizens. We conclude that television regulation in Australia cannot be ‘modernised’ by allowing the anti-siphoning regime to wither on the vine in gesturing to technological innovation, market de-regulation and unequal choice. Such interventions in national media and sport markets can, it is proposed, enable the necessary innovation to enhance rather than erode cultural citizenship rights for the benefit of large segments of society.

Развитие репертуара государева и патриаршего хоров в России XVI—XVII вв.

In Moscow of the 16th — 17th centuries the choir at the Tsar’s court and the choir at the court of the Metropolitan (from 1589 — the Patriarch) of All Russia united the best musical creative forces of the country. According to the author, the study of historical data on the life and activities of the Tsar’s and patriarchal singers indicates that they belonged to the category of court service class people. The church-singing repertoire of the main choirs was formed in accordance with the requirements of the liturgical Statute and the rules of Old Russian musical art development, political trends of the time and events of national importance. This repertoire consisted of different styles chants and chants of authorship, which the singers rewrote and performed. The findings of the study are based on an analysis of a wide range of singing manuscripts, documentaries and other sources.

Antraštės COVID-19 pandemijos kontekste: erzulio komunikacija

The media attention to COVID-19 was phenomenal in Lithuania as well as worldwide. Information about the coronavirus accounted for almost 56% of the total information flow in Lithuania during the pandemic. Compared to how other events of national importance were covered in the media, the number of media reports about the new virus was more than double. The increasing consumption of media content also increases the threats associated with this phenomenon: the uncritical selection of information, the impact of negative news, etc. The even greater consequences of such threats are implied and imagined in cases where addressees are limited to fragmented information, i.e., headlines rather than articles, media-covered texts found on the front pages of news portals, rather than constructive searchbased news items. This paper presents a study in which headlines were chosen as a research object. The goal of the research was to analyze the headlines on the topic of COVID-19 in different Lithuanian news portals and to find out what functions they perform in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Four Lithuanian news portals, namely, 15min.lt, alfa.lt, delfi.lt, and lrytas.lt, were selected as research sources. The research material consists of headlines under the headings “Lithuania” and “Health” during two periods – the first week of the first quarantine in Lithuania (March 16–23) and the first week of the second quarantine in Lithuania (November 7–14). The total number of headlines analyzed is 2178, and their number in different news portals is as follows: 15min.lt – 824, alfa.lt– 334, delfi.lt– 725, lrytas.lt– 295. The study is pilot and purely qualitative: the content of the headlines on the topic of COVID-19 was analyzed with the aim to discover their recurring forms, to capture the tendencies of informing about the COVID-19 phenomenon in the Lithuanian media, and to evaluate the possibilities of further – larger – research in this field.

Why Write Company Histories?

The Bulletin has received a short volume on the history of a bank in one of the large American metropolitan communities which has recently celebrated its hundredth anniversary. The book is unusually attractive in make-up and contains some charming drawings of the bank's home and of streets in its city. The emphasis of the text is on the development of the home city of the bank and its industrial hinterland and on events of national importance which affected banking. The officers and directors of the bank through the century are named, and a little is said of larger policies and of the success of the bank.