Can this possibly be true - a deal like this between a public institution and a purely commercial entity? Anyone who is in the business of nonfiction has to be deeply concerned about what something like this alliance means.
Link: Boing Boing: Smithsonian becomes Showtime's exclusive first-refusal archive.
Also noted on Boing Boing: Brown University's Steven Lubar points out a similar agreement with HarperCollins that effectively wiped out the Smithsonian Institution Press.
From an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education:
SMITHSONIAN LIMBO: In October 2002, the Smithsonian Institution Press released Picturing the Past: Illustrated Histories and the American Imagination, 1840-1900, by Gregory M. Pfitzer, now a professor of American studies at Skidmore College. Mr. Pfitzer was initially pleased with the way the press treated his book, which explores how 19th-century mass-market paintings and lithographs expressed ideas about America's early colonial history.
But things soon went sour. Mr. Pfitzer's book was published at the beginning of a profound transition at — and some say, the collapse of — the 160-year-old press. In the summer of 2002, under orders to become financially self-sustaining, the press hired a new director, Don Fehr, who had extensive experience with trade publishers in New York. Between 2002 and 2004, Mr. Fehr put together a new sales-and-distribution deal with W.W. Norton. He also steered the press away from scholarly titles toward trade projects with potentially broad appeal. (Along the way, the press's name was shortened to Smithsonian Books.)
Early news reports suggested that Mr. Fehr's efforts put the press on the path toward solvency. But at the beginning of 2005, under continued pressure from the Smithsonian's chief bean counters, the press radically scaled back its Washington operations and entered a new era as an imprint of HarperCollins. Mr. Fehr moved into the New York offices of HarperCollins last February.
Link