In our current digital age, these numbers may seem quaint, but in 1985, there was no World Wide Web, no email, no live blogging and no Twitter. Most people still listened to music by listening to the radio or playing vinyl records and cassette tapes; compact discs only became widely available this same year.
The event was a spectacular success, though not without its problems. Satellite links between London and Philadelphia failed several times. But in an ultimate triumph of technology and good will, the event raised more than $125m in famine relief for Africa.
Regional News - A network of nine regional theatres that will tour and produce mid-scale drama has been established thanks to an £800,000 funding injection from Arts Council England. Venues including Oldham Coliseum, Exeter's Northcott Theatre, and Warwick Arts Centre have banded together with help from production company English Touring Theatre to form the Regional Touring Network. It is hoped the initiative will create "a legacy of sustainable touring".
ETT director Rachel Tackley claimed there was "an appetite for brilliant and ambitious mid-scale work in regional theatres which is currently not being filled". "This is a great opportunity for ETT to work with these nine venues and make a real impact on theatregoing opportunities for a broad range of audiences across the country," she told The Stage.
Music on Demand - Facebook is in the early stages of building its own music streaming service which could rival the likes of Spotify, Tidal and Apple Music, it has been claimed. According to music and technology news website Music Ally, Facebook's current plans to monetise music videos on its site "are an important stepping stone towards the on-demand audio service". The site is already known to be planning to host music videos on its site, and will pay the same per-stream as YouTube.
Music Ally quoted an unnamed source as saying, "It's a mass land grab. Facebook going into the video space was always going to be an enormous, ambitious land grab and no doubt something they've been planning for some time as the potential income from ad revenue will be incredible."
Theatre Spectacles - High-tech glasses that project theatre surtitles solely for the wearer have been premiered at the Avignon Festival in France. The augmented-reality glasses are capable of projecting a number of different language translations in real-time, and allow the wearer to adjust the height of the surtitles to their individual personal preference. According to co-developer Theatre in Paris - the company behind the adoption of English surtitles in several theatres in the French capital - the glasses could be utilised in London theatres in as little as 12 months' time.
Theatre in Paris president Carl de Poncins explained, "The glasses themselves are transparent, but you have a little module that will project - as if it was floating in front of your eyes - the text. And you'll be the only one to see it." Co-developed with digital technology company Atos, the glasses were debuted at a French-language performance of King Lear at the Cour d'honneur of the Popes Palace, with surtitles available in English, Chinese, and French.
Bad Vibrations - The Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy has received mixed reviews. In The Sunday Times, Camilla Long wrote, "Perhaps the director, Bill Pohlad, couldn't really face the difficulties of Wilson's darkest moments. This is a film that is entirely composed of the softer, non-important bits of Wilson's career,
