The lively, sprawling chronology of the concert-ticket sales business.
Relix editors Budnick (Jambands: The Complete Guide to the Players, Music, and Scene, 2003, etc.) and Baron begin by recapturing the “eureka moment” of computer moguls Harvey Dubner and partner Jack Quinn in the 1960s. Both men managed to surmount a spectrum of technological kinks to roll out a revolutionary operating system that expanded automated ticketing to encompass not only theater venues, but the lucrative rock music and sporting-event business as well. Dubbed Ticket Reservation Systems, it endured fierce competition and necessary rebranding (Ticketron), while an ingenious startup venture (that would become Ticketmaster) began competing for venue contracts and consumer sales with technology capable of processing increasingly complex ticketing platforms. The authors engagingly trace the industry’s evolution through its rapid and profitable growth trends in the ’70s and ’80s, aided partly by shrewd businessmen like Ticketmaster honcho Fred Rosen, an entrepreneur who savored his company’s absorption of rival agent Ticketron in 1991. However, trouble began to mount. Customers revolted over Ticketmaster’s excessive, involuntary tiers of “service fees,” and allegations of unsavory and overzealous business practices sparked an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for antitrust practices. A host of volatile lawsuits followed, though nothing could prevent the highly scrutinized merger with LiveNation in 2010. Budnick and Baron offer information in accessible language fortified with verbatim dialogue from a pantheon of music-industry brass. Classic-rock bands, musicians, managers, concert promoters, radio broadcasters and entertainment attorneys contribute to a spirited forum on how the grinding gears of the evolving (often double-crossing) ticket market has affected their concert tours and business. An exhaustive, somewhat circuitous literary treatment that favors history over histrionics.
Pub Date: June 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-55022-949-3
Page Count: 392
Publisher: ECW Press
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
A provocative contribution to the energy debate.
Former U.S. Secretary of Energy Abraham advocates a new power-generation strategy for the next 20 years.
The author suggests that the United States derive its energy from a combination of sources, including nuclear energy, natural gas and coal gasification and hydroelectricity, solar power, wind power and other renewable sources. However, Abraham warns that competing priorities—increasing energy independence, maintaining low energy prices and the not-in-my-backyard syndrome, among others—combined with what he deems to be irrational fears about nuclear energy have prevented a competent approach to dealing with the problem of global warming: “The contradictions,” he writes, “always emerge to undermine any momentum we may establish.” Although bipartisan consensus has been at low ebb recently, Abraham attempts to bridge the gap. He remains a strong advocate for tapping off-shore oil reserves and opening the national parks for drilling, but he gives short shrift to the conservative claim that scientific evidence about global warming is a hoax. While he endorses solar and wind power as auxiliary energy sources, his central thesis focuses on the need to build more than 50 new nuclear plants in the next 20 years as a major component of a viable program for clean energy. A section on nuclear energy covers several crucial objections—reactor safety, terrorist attacks, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the problem of nuclear waste—and points to its advantage over solar and wind power because of its tremendous energy density: “2 million times greater than the energy releases from chemical reactions of fossil fuels.”
A provocative contribution to the energy debate.Pub Date: July 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-57021-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2010
The suspenseful tale of an employee buyout that has kept an old-line steel mill operating when many of its Rust Belt counterparts have fallen by the wayside. Drawing on apparently open access to key figures in the lengthy survival struggle, Pittsburgh-based attorney Lieber offers an absorbing account of what happened after National Steel, then America's fifth-largest producer, resolved to close its tinplate facility in Weirton, West Va. While the 1982 decision made business sense, it would have precipitated a socioeconomic disaster in the surrounding area. With thousands of high-paying jobs at stake, the community, politicians, the plant's union, and a flock of outsiders (some with ideological axes to grind) went into action. In return for sizable wage concessions, rank-and-file workers eventually acquired the Weirton complex by means of a controlling interest in a debt-burdened employee stock ownership plan. The 1984 buyout proved but the start of a long march during which the self- consciously democratic owners have had to cope with the fact that their tinplate competes not only with imports from Asia and Europe but also with such rival materials as aluminum and plastic. Constant debates about badly needed capital expenditures, contractual rights, corporate governance, and allied issues convulsed without ever quite transforming shop-floor culture. Despite frequent infighting, Weirton has retained a place in the global steel market in large measure because labor and management found ways to get along with each other at critical junctures. Lieber's narrative brings events to vivid life with deft profiles of the lawyers, union stewards, corporate executives, investment bankers, and other parties to the protracted proceedings who rose to the occasion—or failed to. A detailed briefing on a consequential deal that opened the way for more landmark transactions. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-670-82075-X
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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