Speaking of being so terribly destitute and actually considering those Spam recipes at the top of our Gmail: Like its banks, America's marketers are facing hardships they've not encountered for decades.
No, they're not finally having a collective attack of conscience about their job being nothing more than a parlor trick to relieve hardworking people of their money. What the admen and women are struggling with is this: How does one go about selling bullshit to a public tightening its purse strings after being slapped awake by financial ruin?
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You always knew a device that let you fast-forward through commercials was too good to be true. The reason why shows like Gossip Girl have gotten so heavy-handed with their product placement ("Here Serena, try some of this delicious Vitamin Water while mulling over your relationship with Dan!") is because the coveted teen demographic are using DVRs to prerecord their programs and skip the commercials. Which is totally their right! But also, it's hurting The CW's Nielsen numbers. Except! New "delayed viewing" ratings are out, and it shows more people are watching The CW than previously thought. But! Those viewers are probably skipping ahead 30 seconds at a time. And!: CONTINUED »
The Lifetime channel is making it very clear that it's sick and tired of being a punchline B-list comediennes use when talking about what they do when they get dumped or are on their periods.
First the network sneakily snatched away Bravo's trendy reality program Project Runway. Now it's delving even deeper into the hip fashion game with a new original reality series, Blush: The Search for the Next Great Makeup Artist. Because culture just doesn't celebrate the useless but moneymaking fashion industry enough!
Yet despite its similarities to shows like Runway and Shear Genius, Blush also promises to be quite different—it's going to be much, much worse. That's because it's basically a goddamn unabashed infomercial.
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Taking a cue from the zombie-aliens in They Live, Amazon and TiVo teamed up to present to you the easiest way to become a mindless drone in a system of rampant consumerism.
Introducing Buy. It. Now.:
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Great news for lazy television viewers and soap opera addicts: Recording shows on your DVR is not a violation of copyright law! The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York even said so, dismissing claims from evil networks like Turner Broadcasting, 20th Century Fox, CBS, ABC, and NBC, which, back in 2006 when DVRs were just an ugly acronym, considered the technology an affront on their God-given right to make you watch terrible ads for local car dealerships and LavaLife.com. The television networks now have the option of appealing to the Supreme Court, instead of accepting the challenge of DVRs and producing better programming. [Photo: Chris Madden]
After a Coca-Cola spot airing before the American Idol finale, television advertisements from Dominos Pizza, Topps Major League Baseball Cards, E-Trade, General Mills, and the movies You Don’t Mess with the Zohan and Sex and the City were, according to TiVo data, among the least fast-forwarded through in May, a category otherwise known as "just tolerable enough." [TVD]
By slashing the number of commercials for two new dramas, Fringe (fall premiere) and The Dollhouse (January premiere), Fox has been able to command 35-40 percent premiums for regular 30-second commercial spots.
It's all part of the network's Remote Free TV initiative, which hopes that by eliminating the amount of total commercial time, viewers will become more engaged in the programming and, thus, less likely to skip through the ads. (Gimmicks like this one have helped Fox sell out 70 percent of its upfront primetime commercial spots, and they could finish sales by the end of the week.) [MW]
Advertisers like it because it eliminates commercial clutter, where so many ads are squeezed into a single block of programming that marketing messages can be easily lost amidst the inundation.
Viewers like it because it means they'll have to hit the fast-forward button less often.
Fox insists it didn't intentionally run American Idol a smidge long to cut off Ryan Seacrest revealing the winner's name to DVR viewers. "The winner, by 12 million votes, of ‘American Idol’ 2008 is David —," was how things might've appeared on your end after sitting through what was essentially a two-hour ad for The Love Guru. [NYT]
The biggest upset on last night's American Idol wasn't that Aussie hottie Michael Johns was sent home, but that TiVo, which claimed to be able to predict who would go home, got it wrong. By analyzing which performances are replayed or skipped over by a sample of 20,000 subscribers, the DVR service has accurately predicted the ejections for the last four consecutive weeks. This week, they fingered Syesha would go home. Obviously, they got it wrong; she was only in the bottom three.
TiVo's Stopwatch data reveals TV viewers are more likely to fast-forward through your ad if you're plugging how "Ford tough" your new truck is instead of, say, how fat you're getting without a Bowflex.
• Tommy Hilfiger is not a racist. And he's hired "outside people" to keep an eye on anyone who claims otherwise.
• Ion Media Networks, NBC Universal and hedge fund Citadel to get in bed together, feel awkward about it in the morning.
• Time Warner mags are still a drag on earnings. Fortunately, the insanely priced restaurants in the TWC more than make up for it.
• Tivo offers its customers the ability to fast forward through all the annoying commercials. Including all the annoying commercials for Tivo.
• How many over-privileged Communications majors does it take to plan an after-party for Charlotte Ronson? Answer: Who cares—as long as they're attractive.
• And finally, April showers brings…lousy ratings for CNBC.
Oh, those silly blogs, always messing with actual things in real life. Today's example is TiVo, the kicking-to-stay-alive company who saw shares jump 3 [sarcastic exclamation point here] percent after a random rumor a blog seems to have fueled talk of a takeover attempt by a company (Cheap TV Spots) that nobody has ever heard of. Puts your faith back in the Nasdaq, eh?
Following a single blog posting speculating about a takeover bid, Cheap TV Spots issued a statement denying the rumor, which got investors hungry.
While the statement noted that Cheap TV Spots' "star is rising" and that "buzz on the Internet is increasing about future moves by the company," a quick Google search turns up only one mention of the company possibly buying TiVo.
That came at 7:13 p.m. on Dec. 8 from a blogger named "beachbasedbiz," who posted a comment on CNET's "TalkBack" forum speculating about a European group possibly funding deals for the company.
A Factiva search for Cheap TV Spots in the last 12 months turns up seven matches, including an Oct. 7 release by the company saying that it wasn't planning on buying rival Spotrunner.
Like yesterday's release, the October statement also cited blog rumors as rationale for its dissemination.
Really. If idiots on Wall Street give Jack Shafer one more reason to harp on our kin, we're gonna start some shit.
Every once in a while a piece of media news comes across our radar that is so hilarious in its sincerity we can barely contain ourselves.
Almost just as often, a yoga mat toting friend of ours will feign concern at our vapid existence, and over tofu pad thai will ask "who is your guru?"
Thankfully, one of our greatest wishes has come true. We can now laugh at high profile media people being completely ridiculous and satisfy our spiritual quest. Thanks to TiVo’s new partnership with various "prominent magazines," viewers can get advice from editors of such important cultural touchstones as Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated, and Star on what to watch on TV. Amazing isn't it — those pubs, respectively, just about cover our mind, body, and soul.
For instance, a TiVo sub that chooses Vanity Fair as a guide will be offered movies culled from the magazine’s list of the 50 best films of all time. The titles selected by Vanity Fair editors––the current list includes Annie Hall and Goodfellas––will automatically be recorded by TiVo every two weeks.
We absolutely can not wait to start programming our DVR to Guru Graydon's must watch list. We'd even watch CBS if he told us too.
TiVo, Mag Editors Launch Guru Guides [Anthony Crupi, Mediaweek]
No longer will TiVo and DVR watchers be able to escape Kentucky Fried Chicken advertisements, and thankfully, the Sherlocks over at CBS are on the case. The case of the mystery hidden chicken sandwich message.
KFC has created the first ever documented case of a hidden message in a national TV commercial that holds the secret recipe for a free chicken sandwich.
KFC hopes it has found a way to use the new DVR technology to their advantage.
And what is the reward from cracking the code of "the secret recipe for a free chicken sandwich?" A coupon to try a free chicken sandwich — for free! — at participating KFC locations.
Brilliant! Especially when you consider that probably about 85% of the people who actually own DVR, are ordering their lunch in from Balthazar.
• As expected, Simon Fuller and Simon Cowell have reached a settlement in their American Idol feud. Cowell will stay on as a judge, Fuller will drop his copyright infringement lawsuit and male teens everywhere will dream of banging Paula Abdul. [NYT]
• The MTA wants toll booth agents to start dusting the stations and emptying trash cans. The employees' union, naturally, would rather the stations remain the chemical waste dumps they are. [NYT]
• It's much more entertaining to be fired when you're drinking Donald Trump's Trump Super Premium Vodka. It's like he's pointing two of his fingers at you and, with goggles on, his hair looks halfway manageable. [Gawker]
• Freddy Ferrer is, somehow, still making headlines. In what we hope will be the last we hear from him, he's blaming biased media reports for his loss and not Michael Bloomberg's gazillions. [NYT]
• We're not sure what focus group greenlighted this idea, but TiVo is moving ahead with plans to offer views wishlists of advertising. [Hollywood Reporter]
• The Rolling Stones have been signed for the Super Bowl's half-time show. Should any of their skin start flaking away from their bones, there will be a five to 10 second delay to divert the cameras. [Variety]
• Hearst greenlights Weekend, Conde Nast greenlights Men's Vogue and, in unrelated news, Jossip greenlights the crack pipe.
• Meanwhile, to Conde Nast's shock, Men's Vogue is not the "most notable launch of the past two decades." It's Cooking Light, which has skyrocketed to a circulation of 1.7 million — or, if you're using Newsday's counting methods, 19.7 million.
• Had you decided to actually grin and bear the NRQW line and, uh, been blown up by a terrorist bomb, you have WNBC/Channel 4 to blame for withholding the story.
• The Weinstein duo have hit the $420 million fundraising marker for their Weinstein Company, with hopes of releasing 25 films per year. We hope there's a The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D spin-off in there somewhere.
• TiVo isn't just a means to watch Katie Couric's legs on repeat, but it's also an advertiser's best friend. And we thought blogs held that title.
• If New York magazine is to believe, JT Leroy is a fraud. But remember, New York is also where you heard (stratospherically falsely) that Jessica Coen earned a paltry $30,000 a year.
• Camilla Al Fayed (daughter of Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed) will not, in fact, be working at Vogue under Anna Wintour's whip, as had been rumored. She'll be stashed away in the fashion closet and ad sales, otherwise known as where editorial and advertising blend into one homogeneous black hole.
• Time Inc. is trying its hand at a humor website with former Maxim editor Mark Golin at the helm, with some help from Upright Citizens Brigader Chris Kula. Bonus round: Even Norm Pearlstine might get the punchlines.
Editorial Director
