Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

I don't know if this is indicative of anything regarding the ever-shrinking American attention span and its effect on cultural events, but I just happened upon a PBS broadcast of a Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra concert (Cincy's orchestra is a very fine ensemble), in which their music director, Paavo Jarvi, is conducting Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. The weird thing is that between the first and second movements, the program took a break for Jarvi to give some background on the second movement (which is one of the most gorgeous of all symphonic slow movements), including even quoting the main melody in part before returning to the concert hall for the actual performance. I've never seen this done before. If it helps people focus on Tchaikovsky's music, then great, but still I wonder if this means we've reached the point where we can't expect people to follow an entire 50-minute symphony anymore. What would they do for a performance of, say, Mahler's Third?

(By the way: Cincinnati's concert hall looks absolutely magnificent. If I have any readers from that neck of the woods, can anyone attest if it's as beautiful as it looked in the few brief shots of the entire hall that were on the program?)