David Lister, Arts News Editor, meets Covent Garden’s outspoken new leader. Sir Colin Southgate breezed into Covent Garden last night and broke ranks with his predecessor’s public hand-wringing about reducing prices and increasing access.
Sir Colin, also chairman of EMI, said: “On the one hand everybody wants us to sell the tickets for nothing; but the same guy pays a fortune to go to Arsenal We mustn’t downgrade the Opera House. He had recently checked out of a drug and alcohol abuse clinic.Though devastated by his death, Love went on to build up her own highly successful rock career. Last year, she received plaudits for her screen performance as the tragic, drugged up wife of a US porn king, starring opposite Woody Harrelson in The People vs Larry Flynt.More than 100 films will be shown at this year’s Sundance festival – an event for which much of Hollywood decamps, en masse, to the mountains above Salt Lake City for 10 days of skiing and networking.Responding to the decision not to show his film, Broomfield said: “I think its extremely sad that this festival, which is supposed to represent free speech and freedom of expression, should be behaving this way.”. But organisers cited an ongoing legal matter to justify unceremoniously dropping the film one day before the festival was due to start.”We have been informed that there are a number of unresolved legal matters between the film-makers and others – including uncleared music rights – which make it impossible for us to present the film,” a spokesman said in a prepared statement.”We hope that Nick [Broomfield] can resolve these matters and that his film will receive the exhibition it merits.”Cobain, at age 27, one of the pre-eminent figures of the 90s rock music scene, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in April 1994. The film, he said, contained only a brief encounter with Love, when he buttonholed her on camera as she presented a free speech award at the American Civil Liberties Union.The Sundance Festival has prided itself on its independent spirit, operating outside the big-time Hollywood studio system. It is not the first time his subjects, including actress Lily Tomlin and AWB Afrikaner party leader Terre Blanche, have turned prickly.In dealing with Love, however, he has encountered a rock music star and Hollywood persona with formidable clout, at the crest of her career.

But two days before its first scheduled public screening, organisers have bowed to pressure from Love and her record label and decided to pull the plug.
The festival, founded by actor Robert Redford, has become the leading US showcase for independent films, and Love threatened a lawsuit on the grounds that it contained copyrighted music performed by her own band, Hole, and Cobain’s Nirvana, Associated Press reported.Broomfield, by contrast, claimed he had full legal clearance to use what he said were excerpts from the BBC’s Top of the Pops.The film-maker has built his reputation on tracking down, camera in hand, major and minor celebrities from Margaret Thatcher to Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, probing their lives and their associates. Kurt and Courtney by award-winning British film-maker Nick Broomfield was to have been one of the highlights of this year’s prestigious Sundance Film Festival in Utah. The premiere of a controversial film on the lives of rock couple Courtney Love and her late husband Kurt Cobain has been cancelled following legal pressure Tim Cornwell in Los Angeles reports. “The BBC is taking advantage of the opportunity to jointly produce some bulletins to ensure optimum use of resources.”. “It seems that the time spent creating an international news service has been wasted. I don’t think the BBC at home has ever understood how appreciated World is globally.”Until last year, BBC Worldwide had full control of BBC World, but last year another BBC restructure placed it within the News & Current Affairs Directorate where it has had to share budgets with News 24.The expense of running News 24 has impacted on other parts of the News Directorate and last year provoked a revolt by the presenters of Radio 4’s Today programme and Newsnight over plans to make news programmes share editors and budgets to save money.A spokesman for the BBC said that the shared broadcasts would at present amount to just one and a half hours of programming a day and that all redundancies would be voluntary.

Sources at BBC Worldwide claim that their international channel is exceeding all targets to reach new viewers and attract advertising revenue. In many countries BBC World has replaced Ted Turner’s CNN on local cable and satellite services because of its Ameri-centric world view. BBC World has been able to make rapid inroads because of the high reputation of the BBC’s World Service radio broadcasts.Now, however, some at BBC Worldwide believe its battle with CNN is being threatened by the need to support News 24 – a service that can be seen in Britain by only a few cable homes and those who watch once BBC goes off air at night.”One has to wonder if the game plan isn’t to subsume more and more of BBC World under a service that is not meant for international viewers,” said one BBC source. A fresh row is brewing at the BBC because its new 24-hour TV news channel is costing so much that the corporation has had to cut jobs from its global news channel BBC World.
BBC World, which broadcasts outside the UK to 50 million homes in 187 countries, is to lose 24 posts and is having some of its international output replaced by a simulcast of the recently-launched domestic channel BBC News 24.A number of BBC World’s senior editors will be made redundant, freelancers have been dropped and casual workers contracts will not be renewed because of the need to save money for News 24.The decision has provoked anger with BBC Worldwide, the BBC’s commercial and international arm which has been developing BBC World for the past three years. Paul McCann, Media Correspondent, explains how everything must be sacrificed for the little-loved domestic 24-hour news channel. Yesterday the four boys, who were all referred to by their first names, sat in court reading books and comics they had brought with them.The law was changed four years ago to allow boys as young as 10 to be charged with rape and Mr Dennis said one issue in the case would be whether they knew they were doing wrong.

He concluded: “These days it is unrealistic to suggest that these boys did not fully appreciate that they were doing something that was plainly, seriously wrong.”The case continues.. The BBC has cut jobs and news bulletins from the British channel that was taking on America’s CNN across the globe and winning. Mr Dennis said one of the boys admitted to the headmistress touching the girl with his penis but all of them claimed she had consented. The police were called in and all five boys were arrested.Mr Dennis told the court that the boys and their victim all knew each other very well. The girl said: “He followed me when I was going to tell my mum.”She eventually told her mother that some boys had told her to strip, but did not say any more after she was criticised for not standing up to them.”Unfortunately, her mother did not quite take on board what she was being told,” said Mark Dennis, for the prosecution.The girl asked to stay at home the next day but her mother made her go to school, writing her a note for the headmistress asking her to investigate her daughter’s claims.The headmistress interviewed the boys and it was only at this point that the full details were revealed. After school, she returned home with her cousin, who stayed the night at her house.The court was told that the boy “shadowed” her as she tried to tell her mother what had happened.