We have some new artwork online at the pbm web site.

click to enlarge

And if the shows look interesting, pop along to pbmusicals.com and check out the video clips and audio samples. Don't forget to support the company by clicking on the ad that appears at the end of each video - just for clicking we get a few pence towards out internet costs!

Yesterday I was telling you about my company's new website ...

... at www.pbmusicals.com and the fact that if you click on the advert that appears at the end of each of our online video samples, we benefit from a small financial contribution from the advertiser concerned. (Thank you to those of you that have taken the time to visit the site - and I hope you enjoyed the videos too!)

I now want to let all my fellow animal lovers know about The Animal Rescue Site (here) where you will come across a similar set-up. There's a button marked "Fund Food For Animals" and if you click it you provide the equivalent of ".6 bowls of food and care to a rescued animal in a shelter or sanctuary". And it's free!

Apparently The Animal Rescue Site has been having trouble getting enough people to click daily to meet their quota to get free food donated from their sponsors (according to my local paper) so why not bookmark the page and spend the fifteen seconds it takes every day to help them out at no cost to yourself?

And then treat yourself to a video at pbmusicals.com and click the advert at the end, thereby ensuring thatI can click on the "Fund Food For Animals" button daily too.

The full address you need is www.theanimalrescuesite.com

I've been spending the last few days updating the company's web site at pbmusicals.com

This was partly so that the information there about our annual musical theatre summer school (which this year is 'The McCool School') was up to date with booking information and dates, etc. but also because I was never happy with the quality of the video content.

We use short video clips of our shows (or slideshows of production photos accompanied by show music) to give visitors a sample of our productions - but until now the best I could do was embed YouTube videos. Now, YouTube is great for many things, but the picture quality can be blurry and the sound quality is poor - especially for my needs. It's difficult to listen to your carefully crafted music once it has been squeezed into the mono, single channelled compression that YouTube offers.

Well, now it's all change! I found a video hosting site that allows me to embed our videos in QuickTime format - which not only means that the picture quality is much better (and smoother) but the soundtrack survives unscathed too! (And there are no more unsightly YouTube logos in the corner of each video!)

YouTube also has a ten minute maximum, which was fine for most of our clips which are only a few minutes long each - but the video footage of the musical highlights from a live performance of 'Alice The Musical', for example, had been brutally edited to comly with the YouTube specifications. With the new QuickTime video there is no such time limit, and as well as looking and sounding great, the musical highlights of 'Alice The Musical' now run for a full seventeen minutes - which includes the seven-minute megamix finale in full!

And as a bonus, each video is sponsored by a single-frame advert at the end, and if a viewer clicks on this advert, pbm (my company) gets a small financial contribution from the advertiser - no purchase necessary, we get paid (albeit a tiny amount) for each click!

So next time you have a few minutes to spare, or have visited all your normal time-wasting sites on t'internet, go to www.pbmusicals.com and see our videos (and click the ads!)

I know that I've mentioned before that the funding of the arts in Northern Ireland has finally reached crisis point.

The professional theatre sector is completely decimated and production companies are struggling to exist on massively-reduced funds whilst regional theatres are finding it hard to put together seasons of events on tiny budgets. And the main reason why arts funding has been slashed? So that the government can divert money to the 2012 Olympics. The arts cuts will soon be felt nationwide ...

But you can help arts communities in the UK by signing the petition online here.

The petition is to Stop the Chancellor using Lottery money to plug the funding gap in the 2012 Olympics. It has over 20,000 signatures already - which is enough for Number 10 to have to make an official response when the petition closes on 16 September 2007. If it gets to 40,000 signatures it will make it into the top five most popular petitions on the 10 Downing Street site.

Currently, the petition in the number 4 spot is Continue Funding for the Royal Air Force Aerobatics Team - so we're hopeful that we in the arts world will be able to gather a similar, if not larger, number of supporters ...

Please spread the word (and the URL) - it only takes a second to sign!