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MORE REPERCUSSIONS

As We Try to Put the Pieces Together and Try to Make Sense of It All
It’s still not business as usual in New York City and the United States—not that there is any promise things can return to the way they were before the events of Tuesday morning.

Wall Street will be closed for yet another day. Airline service will resume, but in a limited fashion. The new fall TV season will likely be delayed, as will the World Series. The NFL, Major League Baseball and college football will take the weekend off. But organizers of the Miss America Pageant (which has never been canceled in its 80-year history) say the show will go on as scheduled Sept. 22, claiming that pulling the plug on the show would send the wrong message. Well, thank goodness for that.

Miss America organizers notwithstanding, most people have responded to the tragedies in NYC, DC and Pennsylvania in a respectful and appropriate fashion.

Some examples:

  • XM Satellite Radio postponed the launch of its commercial service—and subsequent party—in San Diego and Dallas.
  • Bertelsmann chairman/CEO Thomas Middelhoff urged the company's 18,000 U.S. employees to give blood. The company set up task forces and hotlines in New York and Germany to assist employees around the clock.
  • Britney Spears arrived yesterday in Sydney on a flight from New York, one of the last aircraft allowed to leave the U.S. prior to the closure of all airports. She was there to promote her new Jive album, due in November; however, she canceled a media conference set for today, saying it was "inappropriate."
  • Soon after Tuesday's terrorist attacks, most U.S. radio stations began broadcasting all news coverage, picking up audio feeds from news services or sister news stations. Those that did return to music programming by Wednesday (9/12) were carefully avoiding songs that may be considered insensitive. Many U.S. stations offered listeners morale-boosting, patriotic programming, while also mobilizing relief efforts, including numerous blood drives. Others also organized prayer vigils and handed out U.S. flags. Broadcasts for some stations have been cut off altogether. Meanwhile, four New York City FM stations had their primary antennas on the World Trade Center, including Clear Channel's WKTU, which is now broadcasting at reduced power on a backup transmitter. Many foreign radio stations across the globe followed suit. Meanwhile, music television networks also shifted programming after the attacks. MTV and VH1 began feeding news from sister Viacom network CBS on Tuesday (9/11), but began airing videos again the next day.
  • NAB Chairman/CEO Edward O. Fritts personally thanked the local radio and TV stations for their "tireless and outstanding service to listeners and viewers during this unspeakable tragedy" and offered the organization's assistance to stations covering the events "as a clearinghouse for information on the efforts of broadcasters to assist citizens in times of crisis."
  • Two bands have reconsidered the artwork of their latest albums. Hip-hop band The Coup changed the artwork for its forthcoming Party Music CD. The original artwork, created over two months ago, eerily depicted group member "Boots" Riley holding a detonator in front of the exploding World Trade Center towers. "We were going to print them this week," said Daria Kelly, director of sales for 75 Ark, the band's label. "Thank goodness we hadn't yet printed them." The label later issued the following statement: "The original cover artwork for The Coup album Party Music was created long before the unfortunate events of September 11th. 75 Ark recognizes and supports the artistic freedom of its artists however, recent extraordinary events demand that we create new artwork for the album. The physical cover of the album has never been manufactured; cover artwork exists mostly as a Web image. We ask that all Web supporters and fans of The Coup and 75 Ark discourage any further distribution of this image. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone whom this tragedy has touched. We appreciate all of your support during this indescribable time."
  • Meanwhile, the rock band Dream Theater and its record company, EastWest, are contemplating whether to withdraw that group's new album, Live Scenes From NY, because of similarly upsetting cover art. That album, released Tuesday, depicts the World Trade Center towers and the Statue of Liberty engulfed in flames and perched atop an apple draped in barbed wire. "It's an unfortunate coincidence, an eerie coincidence," said EastWest spokeswoman Gihan Salem. She said a decision on whether to recall the album would be made in a day or two.
  • Warner Bros. Pictures has postponed the planned Oct. 5 opening of the new Arnold Schwarzenegger film, Collateral Damage, about a man who loses his family when a terrorist bombs a downtown skyscraper, while Touchstone has put off the Sept. 21 release of the Tim Allen starrer, Big Trouble, which features a suitcase with a bomb that ends up on a plane. Columbia Pictures has also pulled from theaters its Spider Man trailer, which depicts a helicopter caught in a web between the World Trade Center Towers, a scene supposedly not in the movie itself, which doesn't come out until May '02.
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