Robin Roberts Has Bone Marrow Disease, Transplant To Come From Sister

 

How Did Broadway Tickets Get So Expensive? Blame the 1%

The most basic thing to say* about why theater tickets are expensive to buy is that theater is expensive to make. Economist William Baumol famously observed that it's really hard to make a string quartet more efficient, because it's not feasible to replace the live violinist with a robot or with a cheaper Chinese violinist Skyping in from Shanghai. Similarly, you can't perform "A Long Day's Journey Into Night" with fewer than four principal actors. You also can't make it without a director, or a costume team, or a set designer, and so on. Prices are people, and theater is labor-intensive work, and that makes a night at the theater necessarily an expensive thing to consume.

But it doesn't explain why average paid admission has increased by a fifth since before the recession to $93, according to new statistics from the Broadway League -- nor why non-musical ticket prices grew by about 30%. Here the answer comes from the demand side. Broadway plays and special events are limited-time-only star-studded events that draw lots of rich people. And producers have gotten wise to the idea that rich people are extremely price insensitive when it comes to seeing celebrities on the Great White Way, especially if there's only a short window. The message rich people appear to be sending is: If you charge it, we will pay it.

Navy drone crashes in Maryland

A U.S. Navy drone crashed Monday in marshy area near Salisbury, Maryland, military officials said.

Carney: 'You all ought to do your jobs'

 White House press secretary Jay Carney has voiced frustration with the press for taking comments out of context last week when President Obama said "the private sector is doing fine." But Carney stopped short of promising that the Obama campaign would not take Mitt Romney's quotes out of context going forward.

"That's a rather remarkable question," Carney said during the White House briefing Monday, adding that he wouldn't "speculate" on whether the Obama team would avoid taking Mitt Romney's comments out of context. "Certainly, we believe that you all ought to do your jobs and report on context."
"I would say that our general position is that we're for truthful, accurate, factual reporting that's done in context," he said.

Facebook's growth rate is slowing

Updated 11m ago 

Facebook's growth appears to be slowing, particularly in the U.S., according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Unique U.S. visitors to the wildly popular social media site rose 5% in April to 158 million, according to data attributed to comScore. ComScore confirmed the data.

That's the slowest growth rate since comScore started tracking data in 2008.

Users spent more than six hours a month on the site in April, up 16% from the prior year. Still, that's a slower growth rate than the 23% increase in 2011, according to comScore data cited in the report.

Facebook went public on May 18 in a widely anticipated market debut. But the stock price has slid since then. Facebook's stock was up about 2% to $27.65 on Monday afternoon.