BROADWAY'S MARKETING TURNS INTERACTIVE December 25, 2008 (NY Times ) The bright lights of Broadway draw millions of people to New York’s theater district every year, but having a celebrity’s name on a marquee does not always guarantee a full house. So to fill more seats, theater producers are turning to MySpace to make a few new friends.Read Story
YOUTUBE'S DISPUTE UNDERSCORES MUSIC LABELS WEAK HAND December 24, 2008 (Reuters) First it was MTV, then it was Apple, and now it's YouTube. The music industry, faced with declining CD sales, has repeatedly tried to find new income streams only to see its partners thrive with minimal benefit to the labels themselves. Read Story
SURVEY SHOWS WE'RE LIVING IN A "MEDIA DEMOCRACY" December 17, 2008 (Venture Beat ) We’re living in a media democracy, where no single form of media dominates the attention of Americans. It’s also an age where everyone contributes to the media, not just traditional media companies. That’s a conclusion of the third annual Deloitte survey on the state of media, which asked respondents how they spent time with media. Read Story
LEGAL ISSUES WATCH IN 2009 December 15, 2008 (AdAge) Advertising Age provides 10 upcoming ad-industry issues likely to find their way into Congress, the federal regulatory agencies or the courts in the coming year, including product placement regulation, direct-to-consumer drug ads and the deductibility of marketing as a business expense. Read Story
FOX'S 'SECRET MILLIONAIRE' MAKES A SHOW OF CHARITY December 10, 2008 (The Boston Globe) "Secret Millionaire" is obviously meant to milk populist fury about the recession and those at the top. This isn't quite an hour of stoning rich people, but it asks them to eat some crow and shell out at least $100,000 for the needy while the cameras roll.Read Story
TEXT MESSAGING PICKS UP SPEED WITH MARKETERS? December 9, 2008 (Brandweek) President-Elect Barack Obama's "V.P. pick" text message remains the most notable example of short-code marketing in the U.S. Given the immense popularity of texting in the U.S. and abroad, it's not surprising that marketers have ramped up their use of the medium to engage their customers--where there's an audience, marketers are not far behind.Read Story
FACEBOOK CONNECT December 4, 2008 (The Economist) A new button is appearing on some websites. It says “Facebook Connect” and saves visitors from having to fill out yet another tedious registration form, upload another profile picture and memorise another username and password. Instead, visitors can now sign into other sites using their existing identity on Facebook. Read Story
WHERE ARE TV'S OBAMA LIKE CHARACTERS? November 30, 2008 (LA TImes)Some prominent creative forces behind shows that featured black families see a tougher road ahead. In fact, not only will they have great difficulty locating any black family in a leading role on the networks, they also will see it's nearly impossible to find a scripted comedy or drama that features a young person of color in a central role. Read Story
BLACK FRIDAY UP IN E-COMMERCE SPENDING November 25, 2008 (Google/AP) ComScore, reported its tracking of holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 28 days of the November – December 2008 holiday season. For the holiday season-to-date, $10.41 billion has been spent online, marking a 4-percent decline versus the corresponding days last year, while Black Friday saw $534 million in online spending, up 1 percent. For the combination of Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, online sales were up 2 percent relative to last year.Read Story
NBC IN TALKS FOR REMAINING SUPER BOWL ADS November 25, 2008 (Google/AP) Most advertising slots for the 2009 Super Bowl that weren't sold in September still haven't moved, a change from earlier in the year when NBC announced the air time had been selling faster than usual. Super Bowl regulars like FedEx Corp., Garmin Ltd., Salesgenie.com and General Motors Corp. are sitting out this year's football championship, to be held Feb. 1 in Tampa, Fla. Read Story
AMERICAN YOUTH TRAIL IN INTERNET USE November 24, 2008 (Reuters) Fewer young Americans have Internet access than their peers in the Czech Republic, Canada, Macao and Britain, a survey of 13 countries around the world showed. Among 12 to 14 year olds, 100 percent of British youth use the Internet, followed by Israel at 98 percent, the Czech Republic and Macao and 96 percent and Canada at 95 percent, according to the World Internet report by the Center for the Digital Future.Read Story
HOW RECKITT BENCKISER ROUTED RIVALS November 17, 2008 (AdAge) The most successful major package-goods company of the past five years in sales and profit growth probably isn't the one you'd think. Unheralded Reckitt Benckiser has been beating the likes of its more glamorous European neighbors. Read Story
STUDY SHOWS HOW SPAMMERS CASH IN November 10, 2008 (BBC News) Spammers are turning a profit despite only getting one response for every 12.5m e-mails they send, finds a study. By hijacking a working spam network, US researchers have uncovered some of the economics of being a junk mailer. Read Story
TV STATIONS BEMOAN END OF CAMPAIGN ADS November 7, 2008 (Boston Globe) It's a dark day for television. The conclusion of the US election means the end of a bounty of political advertising nationwide for television stations, which now have few new business prospects ahead.Read Story
STARBUCKS HANDS OUT FREE COFFEE TO VOTERS November 3, 2008 (Brandweek) Starbucks launched a major TV effort during the weekend in hopes of driving much-needed customers to its coffee shops on Election Day. A 60-second TV spot says the chain will give away a free, 12-oz. cup of coffee on Nov. 4 to those who vote.Read Story
PUBLIC MIGHT CUT CORD ON LANDLINES AND CABLE TV October 27, 2008 (AdAge) For years, it's been one of those speculative staple questions of consumer-media research: If you could only keep one thing out of a list that included your phone, your TV or your computer and internet connection, what would it be? Read Story
STUDY: OBAMA A BMW, MCCAIN A FORD October 21, 2008 (Brandweek) Politics are a complicated subject. To simplify the way consumers really feel about the presidential candidates, Landor Associates and research firm Penn, Schoen & Berland asked survey respondents to compare them to brands.
The results were telling. While Democratic nominee Barack Obama was compared to Google, his Republican competitor John McCain was likened to AOL. Obama was also associated with BMW and Target, while McCain was linked with Ford and Wal-Mart. Read Story
KMART PROMOTES LAWAWAY SERVICE October 16, 2008 (Brandweek) Kmart has launched a campaign that positions the company as the only mass discount retailer to offer a layaway service. The hope is to drive sales at Kmart stores this holiday season, as consumers search for penny-pinching options during the recession. Read Story
STUDY: ANTI DRUG ADS HAVEN'T WORKED October 15, 2008 (ABC News) Despite investing $1 billion in a massive anti-drug campaign, a controversial new study suggests that the push has failed to help the United States win the war on drugs. A congressionally mandated study released today concluded that the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign launched in the late 1990s to encourage young people to stay away from drugs "is unlikely to have had favorable effects on youths." Read Story
YOUTUBE, CBS PARTNER ON LONG FORMAT CONTENT October 10, 2008 (Mediaweek) YouTube has undertaken a major shift in strategy, as the online video giant will begin streaming long-form professionally produced content, starting with a host of show from CBS’ library such as Star Trek and Beverly Hills 90210.
And unlike the majority of YouTube clips, this content will carry pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll video ad spots. Read Story
JUSTICES CANNOT ESCAPE HEARING FOUR LETTER WORDS October 4 , 2008 (NY Times) Come Election Day, there will almost certainly be cursing at the Supreme Court.The justices are scheduled to hear a case that day concerning dirty words on television, and it will be hard for the advocates in the case to describe its facts without using four-letter words. The appeals court argument, which involves swearing by Cher and Nicole Richie on a prime-time awards show, would have made a sailor blush.
Read Story
AUDIENCE LISTENING MAY DRIVE AD SPEND DECISIONS September 23, 2008 (Broadcasting & Cable) A new frontier in advertising research is “listening” to consumers via the digital-media ether, and this embryonic slice of audience measurement may eventually emerge as a big driver of ad-spending-allocation decisions, speakers said a seminar during Advertising Week in New York. Read Story
NJ ATTORNEY GENERAL ISSUES PORTABLE PEOPLE METER SUBPOENA September 15, 2008 (RadioLink) New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram's office has issued a subpoena to Arbitron -- which the office calls "the monopoly provider of ratings service to U.S. radio stations" -- seeking information on the Portable People Meter. Milgram's office says it issued the subpoena "concerning allegations that [Arbitron's] new method for measuring radio station listenership in New Jersey is flawed, statistically unreliable, and undercounts the listening habits of minority consumers." Read Story
BRAVE NEW WORLD OF DIGITAL INTIMACY September 7, 2008 (NYTimes) On Sept. 5, 2006, Mark Zuckerberg changed the way that Facebook worked, and in the process he inspired a revolt. Zuckerberg, a doe-eyed 24-year-old C.E.O., founded Facebook in his dorm room at Harvard two years earlier, and the site quickly amassed nine million users. By 2006, students were posting heaps of personal details onto their Facebook pages. Read Story
6.5 REASONS YOU'RE NOT TOO OLD FOR FACEBOOK August 28, 2008 (BaltimoreSun.com) Are you on Facebook? No? You're not? 'Cause you're too old? Now that's just silly. Two years ago, the social media Web site changed from college students-only to something anyone could join - no matter how many gray hairs they might have. Facebook is no longer just for kids, but people with kids - even grandkids. But yet, you hesitate.Read Story
6 WAYS TO PREP YOUR KIDS FOR AN OVERSEXED WORLD August 15, 2008 (US News) Talking with kids about sex is a challenge for most parents, and it's getting harder by the day, what with children exposed to sexually explicit terms and images at younger and younger ages. Diane Levin, coauthor of So Sexy So Soon, gives these six pointers on how to help your children navigate safely through an oversexualized world. "It's much harder for parents now," Levin says. "But there's a lot more they can do than they realize."Read Story
FASTER, STRONGER, HIGHER, DIGITAL August 11, 2008 (US Today) Marketing around the Olympics used to be like a 100-meter cakewalk. That was then. This is now: Add on a multi-pronged digital ad strategy that feeds on megabuzz. It must touch all the hot buttons from the hippest social-networking sites to the coolest blogs to the cellphones of those most coveted by marketers — trendsetters ages 18 to 26.Read Story
MEDIA OUTLETS SEEKING CAMPAIGN BOUNCE August 4, 2008 (NY Times) This year’s presidential campaign has drawn more voter interest than any other race in generations. For mainstream news media, however, capitalizing on that interest has been hit or miss, though not for lack of trying. Read Story
MICROSFT SEEKS AN AD FRIEND IN FACEBOOK July 25, 2008 (NY Times) Microsoft thinks it has found a promising source of users for its foundering search service: Facebook, the social networking site. To Microsoft, Facebook is a quick way to expand the audience for its search engine.Read Story
WEB NETWORKING PHOTOS COME BACK TO BITE DEFENDENTS July 18, 2008 (AP) Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman, the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner. Pictures from the party showed him in a black-and-white striped shirt and an orange jumpsuit labeled "Jail Bird." Read Story
MEDIA TENOR: ISSUES VS IMAGE DEFINE MCCAIN VS OBAMA July 11, 2008 (MediaChannel) As the nominating conventions approach, a clear split in the nature of coverage for the Obama and McCain campaigns has emerged with the media focusing on Obama’s image and McCain’s issues.Read Story
THE CHANGING FACE OF THE US CONSUMER July 7, 2008 (AdAge) The marketing community, already dealing with a slumping economy and an increasingly consumer-controlled media marketplace, must confront another new reality: The face of the American consumer is changing dramatically. It's not news that the nation is aging, but the fact that the average U.S. head of household is just six months shy of 50 is a startling statistic.
Read Story
GOOGLE MUST DIVULGE YOUTUBE LOG July 3, 2008 (Media Channel) Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled. The ruling comes as part of Google’s legal battle with Viacom over allegations of copyright infringement. The viewing log, which will be handed to Viacom, contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details. Read Story
ONLINE AUTO VIDEO BOOMS June 30, 2008 (ClickZ) Despite an overall slowdown in automotive sales in the U.S., consumers are increasingly using online video to shop for new vehicles, according to a new study from Google. According to the study, searches for specific vehicle brand names coupled with the term "video" have risen 237 percent over the past year.Read Story
OBAMA VS MCCAIN: IT'S TWITTER TIME June 22, 2008 (CNET) And we thought the YouTube and Facebook presidential debates were all that. The latest in debate 2.0 is a campaign face-off on Twitter sponsored by the Personal Democracy Forum that started Friday and is expected to go on at least through the end of the organization's annual conference on Tuesday night. Read Story
DEALING WITH OUR CHILDREN'S TECH OVERLOAD June 15, 2008 (The Buffalo News) Anyone who’s ever spent any time around a kid recognizes it: The Too-Much-TV Look. Eyes glazed. Mouth slightly ajar. Expression vacant. Hello? Is anybody home in there? n an ever-expanding digital media universe where 24/7 technology is the name of the game, many kids spend more time interacting with media – from tiny hand-held devices to big-screen TVs –than ever before. How do you deal with it. Read Story
ETHICS CONCERN OVER PHILLY FALSE AIRLINE AD June 9, 2008 (Editor & Publisher) Did the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News cross an ethical line Friday when they ran a slew of false ads for a non-existent airline in an attempt to gauge the power of print and online advertising? Some journalism ethicists and observers say yes. Read Story
BILLBOARDS THAT LOOK BACK AT YOU May 31, 2008 (NYTimes) In advertising these days, the brass ring goes to those who can measure everything — how many people see a particular advertisement, when they see it, who they are. All of that is easy on the Internet, and getting easier in television and print. Billboards are a different story.Read story
WHEN AN ANCHOR CURSES ON AIR, SHE BECOMES THE NIGHT'S TOP STORY May 14, 2008 (NYTimes) There was Chuck Scarborough, reading something on a computer screen embedded in the desk and not listening to his co-anchor, Sue Simmons. So she let him have it in what sounded like mock derision. But she used a word seldom heard on the noncable air, and then only by accident — a word that is not publishable in the newspaper. Read Story
SAMPLING: THE NEW MASS MEDIUM May 12, 2008 (AdAge) One of marketing's oldest and least glamorous practices -- doling out free product -- has come a long way from the gray-haired ladies in the supermarket aisle. No longer the province of marketers who can't afford to buy mass media, deep-pocketed giants from McDonald's to Starbucks, Coca-Cola and Dunkin' Donuts are adopting sampling on a grand scale, turning it into a media event -- and, in some cases, the media buy. Read Story
NEW GUIDELINES FOR ONLINE VIDEO ADS May 5, 2008 (MediaWeek) The Interactive Advertising Bureau introduced a set of guidelines aimed at bringing more standards to online video advertising--and ultimately to make the still burgeoning medium easier for advertisers to buy.
The new guidelines cover three basic forms of online video ad formats. Read Story
GOOGLE ISN'T THE ONLY ONE April 21, 2008 (Forbes) Recession? What recession? That was the attitude of many online advertising executives at the Ad:Tech conference in San Francisco last week. Though the economic downturn is pummeling magazine, newspaper and television advertising, it's bolstering the digital ad sector as companies shift marketing dollars to the Web in hopes of reaching more consumers. Read Story
THE SMART MONEY WATCHES YOU WATCH VIDEO April 17, 2008 (Washington Post) Last summer, a video clip featuring comedian Sarah Silverman went up on YouTube to promote CleanMyRide.org, an online campaign for cleaner fuel. Then, two months ago, the video saw a sudden spike in traffic. But the video's producer, political-marketing firm MSHC Partners in the District, could not figure out what prompted the delayed jump. Read Story
FIRST LADY TO GUEST TODAY SHOW April 15, 2008 (TVNewser) For the first time ever, a sitting First Lady of the United States will guest host the Today show. Laura Bush will co-host the 9am hour of the show Tuesday, April 22, and she will be joined by her daughter, Jenna Bush during the program. Read Story
BLOGGERS WRITE TIL THEY DROP April 6, 2008 (NY Times) They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home. A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment. Read Story
CAMPAIGN STOPS: TO THE LETTER BORN April 3, 2008 (NY Times) Many designers have waxed admiringly about Barack Obama’s sophisticated typographical design scheme, particularly the consistent use in much of his graphic material of the typeface Gotham, designed by Tobias Frere-Jones. So I called Brian Collins, an expert on branding, to get his thoughts on what this “good design” means for the candidate. Read Story
NET NEUTRALITY'S QUIET CRUSADER March 28, 2008 (Washington Post) Bearing video cameras, laptops and cellphones, a small army of young activists flooded into a recent federal meeting in protest. Members of public-interest group Free Press weren't there to support a presidential candidate or decry global warming. Although Free Press has generated buzz for its aggressive and sometimes controversial tactics online, its ringleader in Washington is an unlikely crusader. Read Story
YOUTUBE TO OFFER METRICS TOOL March 27, 2008 (MediaWeek) Google has introduced a new, free tool to YouTube that will provide those who post video clips on the mega-popular site--whether they are semiprofessionals or media conglomerates--with deeper insights into when, where and how often their video clips are viewed.Read Story
CIGARETTE COMPANY PAID FOR LUNG CANCER STUDY March 26, 2008 (NY Times) In October 2006, Dr. Claudia Henschke of Weill Cornell Medical College jolted the cancer world with a study saying that 80 percent of lung cancer deaths could be prevented through widespread use of CT scans. Small print at the end of the study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, noted that it had been financed in part by a little-known charity called the Foundation for Lung Cancer: Early Detection, Prevention & Treatment. A review of tax records by The New York Times shows that the foundation was underwritten almost entirely by $3.6 million in grants from the parent company of the Liggett Group, maker of Liggett Select, Eve, Grand Prix, Quest and Pyramid cigarette brands.Read Story
ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS NOWHERE AND EVERYWHERE March 17, 2008 (Economist) The big internet and media companies have bid up the implicit valuations of MySpace, Facebook and others. But that does not mean there is a working revenue model. Future social networks, she thinks, “will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be.” No more logging on to Facebook just to see the “news feed” of updates from your friends; instead it will come straight to your e-mail inbox, RSS reader or instant messenger. Read Story
DIGITAL A-LIST: UNILEVER #1 March 17, 2008 (AdAge) Here's the funny thing about Unilever being Digital Marketer of the Year: It doesn't really do digital campaigns. Sure, Unilever won a cyber Grand Prix at Cannes last year for its Dove "Evolution" viral video. It got a remarkable 5.5 million viewers for its "In the Motherhood" online program for Suave in partnership with Sprint. But none of were purely a digital campaign. Read Story
SPORTS TAKE AD SPEND HIT March 13, 2008 (Brandweek) Budget cuts, increased activation behind new media and the lack of an Olympics-World Cup event caused companies to rethink their advertising budgets last year, and traditional sports marketing took a substantial hit. The total ad spend among the 50 companies that allocated the most money to advertise during network and cable sports programming dropped from $4.8 billion in 2006 to $4.4 billion in 2007. Read Story
REVENGE OF THE EXPERTS March 6, 2008 (Newsweek) The individual user has been king on the Internet, but the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward edited information vetted by professionals. By any name, the current incarnation of the Internet is known for giving power to the people. Sites like YouTube and Wikipedia collect the creations of unpaid amateurs while kicking pros to the curb—or at least deflating their stature to that of the ordinary Netizen. But now some of the same entrepreneurs that funded the user-generated revolution are paying professionals to edit and produce online content.Read Story
DISNEY TAKES BIG PLUNGE INTO ONLINE VIDEO February 28, 2008 (LATimes) Eighty years after the 7 1/2 -minute cartoon "Steamboat Willie" helped launch the career of a certain iconic mouse, Walt Disney Co. has returned to its short-form roots with the debut of a digital studio that will develop original content for the Internet.Read Story
BILL MOYERS TEAMS UP TO SHOW HOW EARMARKS WORK February 22, 2008 (PRNewswire)Bill Moyers Journal and the Emmy award-winning PBS series Expose: America's Investigative Reports profiles Seattle Times reporters as they "follow the money," tracing millions of dollars worth of campaign contributions flowing to members of Congress, and billions in federal dollars flowing out of Congress in the form of "earmarks."Read Story
THE LUXURY WORLD AFTER WEB 2.0 February 19, 2008 (Financial Times) What happens when following the fashion herd becomes wisdom of the masses? When everyone can become his or her own fashion editor? When "citizen" journalists replace glossy magazines as oracles of fashion? The next big thing in fashion is not a hot young designer or a new label but an online evolution driven by peer-to-peer recommendation and consumers who want what they see others are buying online - in short, a new kind of conspicuous cyber consumption.Read Story
NONPROFIT JOURNALISM ON THE RISE February 13, 2008 (Philanthropy News Digest) Though often tiny, a number of nonprofit news and media outlets have sprung up in recent years, offering a ray of hope for a troubled industry, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Newspapers funded largely by foundations and individual donors are not new... Read Story
DEMAND FOR VIDEO RESHAPING INTERNET February 11, 2008 (Yahoo) In 1995, the first warning was raised: The throngs of people swarming to the Internet would overwhelm the system in 1996. For more than a decade, that fear has proven untrue. Until right about now. The growing popularity of video on the Net has driven a traffic increase that's putting strains on service providers, particularly cable companies. To deal with it, they have had to change the way they convey Internet data. And they've done this in secret, raising concerns. Read Story
P&G CLEAN UP ON SUPER BOWL TALKING STAIN AD February 5, 2008 (Cincinnati.com) Procter & Gamble Co.'s high-priced, talking-stain ad on Super Bowl Sunday spoke loud and clear to thousands of football fans by Monday morning. P&G capitalized on the buzz generated by its Super Bowl spot for stain remover, Tide To Go. The spot, which featured a talking stain that could be silenced by the product, was viewed more than 100,000 times on YouTube. Read Story| Watch Spot
PRODUCT PLACEMENT RULES February 5, 2008 (Broadcasting & Cable) Advertisers and agencies are trying to get the Federal Communications Commission to seek more comment and information before deciding to adopt new rules on product placement. Read Story
LIPPERT RATES SUPERBOWL SPOTS February 4, 2008 (AdWeek) In possibly the most thrilling Super Bowl ever played, the Giants came from behind, like some preposterous ragtag team in a Disney movie, and won. Though they were created long before kickoff, the two best spots of the evening -- Coke's "Balloon" and Anheuser-Busch's Clydesdale commercial -- expressed the same humanistic, uplifting themes. They even included an underdog and an underhorse -- a great metaphor for human vulnerability. Read Story | See All Superbowl Commercials
THE HOLY GRAIL OF INTERNET TV IS CLOSER TO BECOMING A REALITY January 28, 2008 (BusinessWeek) The dream of watching both Internet video and regular TV programs on the same television is not as distant as many observers fear. Within three years, it now appears likely that a full 40% of U.S. consumers will have some way of connecting their TV displays directly or indirectly to the Internet. Read Story
TECHNOLOGY HELPS DRAW YOUNG PEOPLE TO THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE January 27, 2008 (Macon.com) Pointing to the record-shattering youth turnouts in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries, experts and young political types give credit in part to social networking and text messaging, saying they've helped young voters get involved more than at any time since the Vietnam era.Read Story
PEPSI'S SILENT SUPER BOWL AD January 25, 2008 (Dalla News) PepsiCo Inc. is hoping to make some noise with a Super Bowl ad featuring 60 seconds of silence.
During the Fox network's pregame show on Feb. 3, the nation's second-largest soft drink maker will air a commercial conceived by a PepsiCo employee, starring him and three others, including two who are deaf. Read Story
MICROSOFT SEEKS PATENT FOR OFFICE 'SPY' SOFTWARE January 16, 2008 (London Times) Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical wellbeing and competence. The system would allow managers to monitor employees’ performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer’s assessment of their physiological state. Read Story
CONSUMER HABITS: THE GENERATIONAL DIVIDE IN THE AGE OF NEW MEDIA January 7, 2008 (Deloitte.com) Americans have a ravenous appetite for media, but while content may be king, what types of content people want, how they get that content and whether they like to contribute content of their own frequently depends on the year they were born. Yet even tech-savvy Millennials share many of the same media consumption habits of their parents and older siblings, and, across generations, most people say they’d like to spend more time with their families and friends or even, incredibly, reading a book.Listen to Podcast | Read Story
NETFLIX PARTNERS WITH LG TO BRING MOVIES
DIRECT TO TV January 3, 2008 (NY Times) Netflix, the DVD-by-mail company with more than seven million customers, has a new strategy that may one day make those red envelopes obsolete. The company wants to strike deals with electronics companies that will let it send movies straight to TV screens over the Internet.Read Story
WIKIPEDIA FOUNDER GOING UP AGAINST GOOGLE January 2, 2008 (ABC News) The founder of Wikipedia says taking the online encyclopedia's collaborative approach into the field of search won't dethrone Google Inc. or another major search engine at least not soon. After months of talk and a few weeks of invitation-only testing, Wikia Search is to open to the general public next week. Read Story
THE FACE OF FAME IS CHANGING January 2, 2008 (Forbes.com) The ranks of the world's celebrities used to be dominated by millionaire actors, athletes and musicians, but the Internet has leveled the playing field. A kid with a video camera has access to as large an audience as the biggest Hollywood star. Read Story
AUDIENCE MEASUREMENT ON WEB CLOUDED January 2, 2008 (ClickZ) Talk of online audience measurement reached a crescendo in 2007. Publishers, advertisers and measurement firms grappled with significant shifts in how Web content is published and how users interact with it. Publishers pumped up the complaint volume about reporting discrepancies. And the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) demanded the two biggest online measurement firms shed light on their methods. Read Story
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"The first thing to keep in mind, is that your objective is not to make a 'TV show' or a 'show' of any kind. You are collecting evidence; you are encouraging witness; you are emboldening ordinary people to 'go public.'"
George Stoney from forward in Turn on the Power! Using Media for
Social Change
