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Graeme Newell's Marketing Ideanet 6/21/2010

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Graeme Newell
602 Communications
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In This Issue
TV's Dead-End Web Linking
Major Brands Plan Adaptation, Innovation to New Landscape
Platform, Not Content, is King
A New TV Ad Marketplace: Add $30 Bil?
Study Reveals Ratings Nonresponders Habits
Health Care a Major Topic for Left-Leaning Talkers
Cooper Stands Up for Gulf Residents
Larry King to Lead Star-Studded Gulf Fundraiser
ABC Nets Its Top NBA Telecast
Betty White Brings TVLand Record Ratings
Turkish Soaps Infiltrate Arab Culture
PBS Makes Progress on File-Based Delivery
Google to Unveil One-Click Payment System
Apple Unclear on Racy Apps Policy
Webbies Honor 'Father of the Internet'
Best Webby Speeches

Quotes

“Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure.”
- Albert Einstein

“Don't confuse the art of the possible with the art of the profitable.”
- David Tansley

"Leap and the net will appear."
- Zen Saying

TV's Dead-End Web Linking
by Graeme Newell
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How can an encyclopedia be so damned entertaining? I am an avid user of Wikipedia but I have to be careful because looking up a simple definition can cause me to blow through a whole afternoon. Those little magical blue links take me on adventures I never planned to take. Wikipedia is the alpha standard for web linking. Each entry typically has dozens of links that allow the user to traipse through the world of information unfettered by form or structure. Each journey is as individual as the interest of the user.

This ability to link is one of the most valuable characteristics of sticky web sites. It just makes sense. The user has already shown interest in a topic and satisfying their need for related information is the best way to keep them on a site. One of the ways YouTube achieved its incredible popularity was by mastering linking. It uses sophisticated database techniques to showcase videos that the user finds irresistible. For example, check out "The World Series of Uno" on YouTube. An obscure entry, to be sure. The stickiness voodoo comes from the video list on the side. Using correlation science, YouTube has mathematically calculated the most irresistible videos for someone who is weird enough to watch a four minute video on Uno.

TV web sites rarely incorporate this kind of linking and typically ignore it altogether. Dead-ending readers is the norm. Most articles and videos are "one click and out." A great web site will take users on a meandering path with a long string of links that dig ever deeper into the site. The user will rarely return to a central navigation page. Their search will cross multiple content classes and have a curious structure. Just like an underground cave system, they just keep turning down another corridor, enjoying a fascinating odyssey with little worry about where they will end up.

Most TV web site journeys rarely go past three or four clicks. Far too many sites have a majority of visitors who stay for thirty seconds or less. People zip in, get the info and are off again. People come to the site for specific information, get what they need, then leave.

The problem is a lack of effective promotion on the page - a disregard of enticing links. On TV, we put promos inside of Oprah because the flow opportunities are very high. On web sites, most video content tends to be sorted by media type, not by related content. We put all the text content together. We put all the video clips together. Under the "video" tab you'll find sports, consumer news and drug killings, all right next to each other - three completely unrelated topics that torpedo the chance of linking.

Content should be sorted by demo usability not by media type. Your printed parenting stories should be right next to the parenting video clips, not banished to the "video" tab. Next to these clips should be related topics that appeal to women in their 30's and early 40's. For example, what-to-wear weather. These moms will need this information to send their kids outside. Next to that, stories on crackdowns at local daycare centers. Most television weather is dutifully exiled to the official weather page, never to be seen outside its licensed classification.

Look at this article from the Washington Post. It was created by someone with a newsprint mentality. They just slapped unlinked text on the website as an afterthought. There are no links in the body copy and no help finding related stories.

The problem is most TV web content creators follow the TV workflow when building pages. Just like a TV show, they put one story after another and expect readers to follow the same linear timeline TV has been serving up for years. The beauty of the web is its three-dimensionality. It defies the concept of time because every click has the potential of taking you instantly to any point on the globe. You can change topics on a dime. "Six degrees of separation" is reduced to a single click.

Here are some tips for increasing clickability:

1) Have tons of links inside the body of every article.
Writing the article is just the beginning. Every piece of web content should have many linkable friends. Set goals for your staff. Shoot for at least four or five links in every article.

2) Collect research links as you write.
Writers often say they don't have time to find all these links and include them in their web story. In most cases, there isn't a need to find a lot of new links, but simply to index the links you've already discovered while doing research on the piece. Use bookmark cataloging services like Delicious to keep track of the specific web site locations used to create the story. Remember, try to link to information on your own site as much as possible.

2) Use fewer linear tags to index your content.
Most tags follow strict content parameters. We sort the stories by subject, not by mindset - news, sports, health, consumer, gardening, etc. Add additional tags that speak to lifestyle, attitude and interests. For example: rebellion, hope, intolerance, sarcasm and comeuppance. Expand your list of tags to reflect human interest, not just efficient categorization.

3) Post-roll suggestions
If a viewer takes the time to watch the full duration of a video clip, they are probably fairly involved and ready for more. Make sure you have numerous suggestions for them as soon as the clip ends. Just as YouTube does, put links to related clips right inside the video window.

4) Use tag clouds to invite exploration.
Tag clouds show users other categories that might be of interest. They showcase links they might not have thought of on their own, and help them find related stories. They are a simple way to suggest related content on your site.

Graeme Newell is a broadcast and cable marketing consultant who specializes in relationship branding using core emotional drivers. He guarantees that his teasing seminar will immediately increase your news ratings or his workshop is free. Find out more here.

Major Brands Plan Adaptation, Innovation to New Landscape
Brand owners such as General Electric, Cisco and Microsoft are all adapting their global strategies in a bid to strengthen their positions during the economic recovery. General Electric, the conglomerate, is one firm that has tried to revolutionise major aspects of its portfolio in recognition of the seismic shifts that have resulted from the recession. "This economic crisis doesn't represent a cycle. It's an emotional, social, economic reset," Jeff Immelt, its chief executive, said. "The interaction between government and business will change forever. In a reset economy, the government will be a regulator and also an industry policy champion, a financier and key partner." While arguing the repercussions of the credit crunch amounted to the biggest "challenge of our lifetime," Immelt added that the opportunities have proved to be equally large. General Electric's Ecomagination program and its targeted approach to innovation in countries like India and China are just two examples of this trend. "I've told our leaders at GE that if they are frightened by this concept, they shouldn't be here," Immelt said. "But if they're energized and desire to play a part in transforming the company for the future, then this is going to be a thrilling time." Kate Robertson, UK group chairman of EuroRSCG, also suggested that acquiring an understanding of new media will be essential in engaging the 18–26 year old demographic. "Everything they address in the future, the good and the bad, is actually about a single world," she said. "Digital platforms make the sense of that possible for them and that is a completely different world. Digital platforms also offer them a chance to be heard in a way that's never been possible before." Microsoft, the IT company, is also seeking to roll out a variety of new products as it tries to tap in to the new realities of the market. "In my view, what we now have will be a fundamental economic reset," said Steve Ballmer, its chief executive. "America really has to return to growth that's built on innovation and productivity, rather than leverage and private debt. That must happen," said Ballmer.
WARC

Platform, Not Content, is King
A small segment of young consumers isn't ready to anoint content as king. The price of that content may actually be taking that crown, instead. Nielsen says some 4 million homes -- 6% of all non-cable TV homes -- haven't "cut the cord" because of backlash anger over cable companies. They haven't installed it in the first place. These viewers are young, 18- to 34-year-olds, in "emerging" homes. They are downscale or middle income, college-educated, some of ethnic background. All this make sense: Graduating college students would seem to continue their college habits in the real world, with real jobs. But these viewers bust the myth of their fellow consumers: Nielsen says they are surprisingly "light" TV and video consumers. Here's another busted myth: While viewing levels watching an average TV show are virtually consistent from the first to last minute, viewing levels for the average show streamed online drop substantially from first minute to last. I'm guessing you could attribute this to the short-attention-span, YouTube approach to things. About 2.5% of all video viewing among major demographics is online; that means TV still commands a big 97.5% share -- something isn't likely to change anytime soon. "Online really needs to grow to make a significant dent. There is a long way to go," said Jon Gibs, vice president of media analytics for The Nielsen Co., during a presentation at Nielsen's Consumer 360 conference in Las Vegas recently. Overall, this means people don't watch video the same way on their computers as they do with a live TV show, or with time-shifted viewing. Gibs says it means content isn't actually king, but the platform first -- then, content, a close second. Traditional TV still comes first because it's the best screen. But it is not always the most readily available. That would seemingly be your laptop, mobile phone, or iPad. We are pretty sure if content isn't quite king across all media platforms, it surely is the up-and-coming lieutenant -- perhaps one with a bad attitude -- looking to take the kingdom by storm if necessary. But what if some light-video-using young viewers grow in number, if not continue to shrug their shoulders?
MediaPost

A New TV Ad Marketplace: Add $30 Bil?
Now that the TV upfront is over, we can focus on the usual and the not-so-usual: This would be the scatter markets. More strangely, it would also include the absence of TV networks' typical high-flying bravado of years ago. That's because this season, there was a return of decent price increases in the upfront. The TV networks and programmers have quietly moved on to their next wave of ad business --- all with the hope of gaining perhaps more money in the coming quarterly markets. Long-term MediaPost columnist Dave Morgan believes there is a lot more money to come. With all that set-top box data, addressable advertising and coming performance-oriented sales capabilities, there is no reason the current $70 billion TV advertising market couldn't add another $30 billion to get to a big $100 billion total. Many media agencies have been clamoring for this valuable gold mine of data for years -- stuff that would significantly help their businesses, and, of course, those media sellers. None of this will come soon enough for TV networks, which still rely on pure supply-and-demand models of the marketplace to spike TV revenues. One wonders if these two projections aren't related; TV networks and programmers were somewhat conservative in their price hikes at a crucial time when advertising seems to be threatened by new digital platforms. TV executives aren't just thinking about the long term of coming TV season, but many seasons to come. Who would ruin the chance of raising the anger of big TV marketers, which might increase the pace in sending their money elsewhere? In recent years, a highly priced upfront market can be followed by a low-moving, usually lower-price scatter market. But if networks executives played their cards right this time, the dynamics maybe changing just a bit -- with some price increases happening in scatter as well. Maybe there are 30 billion reasons why.
MediaPost

Study Reveals Ratings Nonresponders Habits
A new study from the Council for Research Excellence gets to the heart of trust in TV ratings. Just who are those people who decline to participate in ratings? And if they did participate, would ratings change? The daunting task of getting nonresponders to step up was the goal of the CRE’s latest study, “Measuring the Unmeasured Television Viewer,” set to be released this week at the Advertising Research Foundation’s annual conference in New York. The study is long overdue—it’s been nearly 30 years since the last comprehensive study of nonresponders was conducted. Yet, every year research firms find it harder and harder—not to mention more expensive—to get people to participate in surveys. In the 1980s, more than 60 percent of people contacted would agree to cooperate. Now, response rates in the 40s are considered good. “This study revealed more about unmeasured viewers than any other effort,” said Ceril Shagrin, chair of the CRE nonresponse bias committee and evp of corporate research for Univision Communications. Getting nonresponders to respond to a nonresponse study is a conundrum. It took a year to collect data, a year to analyze, and it cost $2.1 million. The study of 2,300 nonresponders in metered markets and 9,000 nonresponders in diary markets dove into comparisons of how people watch TV, how they make program choices and their TV equipment. The study’s good news should elicit a sigh of relief from TV researchers. There is little evidence of bias in the ratings. That doesn’t mean that the conclusions have no practical value. “The more nonresponders that can be turned into responders, the greater the reliability of the ratings,” Shagrin said. One of the biggest findings was that noncooperators are more likely to have cable, DVRs, big screen TVs and more TVs. For those households that have high-end equipment, there may be more than a little trepidation about having Nielsen come in and wire up the equipment with meters. Noncooperators also do more unplanned viewing and are more likely to watch TV in groups. Noncooperators in metered markets spend less time listening to radio, but in diary markets, they spend less time at home and more time listening to the radio.
MediaWeek

Health Care a Major Topic for Left-Leaning Talkers
When scholars assess how the Democratic Congress managed to pass a landmark health care overhaul in 2010, they might assign a bit of the credit to liberal talk show hosts. A new study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that health care was a “much bigger topic” for liberal hosts like Keith Olbermann and Ed Schultz than for conservative hosts like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. In a report to be released on Monday, the organization said it found that the liberal hosts spent 44 percent of their airtime talking about health care from June 2009 to March 2010, while conservative hosts spent 26 percent of their airtime on the subject. Similarly, the organization found that MSNBC, which leans left in prime time, devoted 32 percent of its news time to health care, while Fox News, which leans right in prime time, devoted 20 percent. The report also said that reporters and pundits more commonly echoed words used by opponents of the Democratic proposals than terms used by supporters. Notably, it found more than 2,500 media references to “death panels.”
Media Decoder

Cooper Stands Up for Gulf Residents
“There aren’t any small people here,” the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper said from Louisiana on his prime-time program Wednesday night, emphatically rejecting the remarks by BP’s chairman that the oil company cares “about the small people.” Mr. Cooper listed some of the local men and women who had been put out of work by BP’s gusher of oil under the Gulf of Mexico, and concluded, “This is a land of giants.” Some commentators dismissed Mr. Cooper’s unusual show-opener as shtick. But he has become one of the loudest media voices on behalf of gulf residents, reprising a role he played in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Cooper has spent more time in Louisiana — about 20 days — than any other national television anchor since the leak began. Evincing his frustration and his perseverance, he keeps a daily on-air tally of the number of days BP has ignored his interview requests. “I think there’s a basic lack of transparency in their dealings,” he of BP, in an interview. Mr. Cooper’s 10 p.m. program, “AC360,” and others like it have gained notice for trying to hold BP and the government accountable for the oil leak and the cleanup effort. As the crisis nears the two-month mark, there are signs that the news media are taking on a more adversarial role, just as they did after Hurricane Katrina and the widespread flooding of New Orleans. The oil spill gradually gained attention in late April and early May, and since then it has been the country’s dominant news story, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which tracks weekly news coverage. The coverage took a discernible and more aggressive turn last week as “questions about the effectiveness of the response by well owner BP and the government gained a larger share of attention,” the senior director for the project, Jon Morgan, wrote on its Web site.
NY Times

Larry King to Lead Star-Studded Gulf Fundraiser
Among the stars who will appear on an upcoming special show are Justin Bieber, Deepak Chopra, Cameron Diaz, Philippe Cousteau, Ted Danson, Kathy Griffin, Chelsea Handler, Randy Jackson, Kerry Kennedy, Sammy Kershaw, Lenny Kravitz, Jenny McCarthy, Tim McGraw, Alyssa Milano, Aaron Neville, Edward James Olmos, Victoria Principal, Robert Redford, Gloria Reuben, Tyson Ritter, Richard Simmons, Ian Somerhalder, Sam Trammell, Melania and Ivanka Trump and Pete Wentz, with a special performance by Sting. The show is the June 21 edition of CNN's "Larry King Live," which will be a special two-hour telethon called "Disaster In the Gulf: How You Can Help," a fundraiser from 8-10 p.m. ET, the network announced. The funds raised by the telethon will be distributed to United Way, The National Wildlife Federation and The Nature Conservancy, organizations working directly with the families, individuals and wildlife affected by the Gulf oil spill. Wendy Walker, senior executive producer of "Larry King Live," said in a statement, “The Gulf oil spill is a disaster both national and natural in scope, and the point of this effort is to get immediate relief to the people and wildlife who are in urgent need. The telethon’s proceeds go directly to the relief organizations who are working on the front lines to do just that.”
TV Week

ABC Nets Its Top NBA Telecast
ABC's coverage of Game 7 of the NBA Finals was the most-watched ever on the network and the best for the pro hoops league since 1998, during Michael Jordan's last game for the Chicago Bulls. ABC garnered a 15.6 rating and 28.2 million viewers with Game 7, according to Nielsen data, as the Los Angeles Lakers repeated as NBA champions, with an 83-79 over the Boston Celtics. The June 17 game, in which Kobe Bryant was named MVP and the Lakers captured their 16th title to move within one of the Celtics' league-best 17, was ABC's top telecast since it began airing The Finals in 2003. The previously alluded to Jazz-Bulls game on June 14, 1998 -- featuring Jordan's famous push-off against Bryon Russell before connecting on the game-winner -- dunked an NBA record 22.3 rating/ 38 share and some 35.9 million viewers for NBC, as Chicago completed its second three-peat. The 2010 Finals grew 26% in rating (10.6 versus 8.4) and viewers (18.1 million versus 14.4 million) versus LA's five-game triumph over Orlando in 2009. The seven-game series rose 45% in viewership (versus. 12.5 million) and 29% in rating (8.2) compared to the last full-length Finals, the San Antonio Spurs/Detroit Pistons in 2005. By way of comparison, Bulls-Jazz in 1998 was the NBA's best, with an 18.7 rating over six games.
MultiChannel

Betty White Brings TVLand Record Ratings
TVLand's premiere on Wednesday night, June 16th of "Hot in Cleveland," only drew a mixed response from TV critics, but the viewing public is clear in their chant of loving everything Betty White these days. Almost 5 million viewers tuned in, making it the most-viewed, highest rated show in TVLand history. The demo breakdown for the show was of interest: In TVLand's core 25-49 year-old audience, 2 million viewers watched, somewhat more than half of those (1.3 million) being women. In adults 18-49 years old, 1.6 million viewers tuned in. Besides White, the other stars of the show are Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick.
TV Week

Turkish Soaps Infiltrate Arab Culture
Led by “Gumus” (“Noor” in Arabic), a wave of Turkish melodramas, police procedurals and conspiracy thrillers are making their way onto Arab televisions, wielding a kind of soft power. Through the small screen, Turkey has begun to exercise a big influence at Arab dinner tables, in boardrooms and bedrooms from Morocco to Iraq of a sort that the United States can only dream about. Turkey’s cultural exports, not coincidentally, have also advanced its political ambitions as it asserts itself on that front, too, sending a flotilla to Gaza, defying the United States over sanctions on Iran, talking tough to its onetime ally, Israel, and giving Kemal Ataturk’s constitutionally secular state an Islamic tinge. Politics and culture go hand in hand, here as elsewhere. If most Arabs watch Turkish shows to ogle beautiful people in exotic locales, Arab women have also made clear their particular admiration for the rags-to-riches story of the title character in “Noor,” a strong, business-savvy woman with a doting husband named Muhannad. Dr. Shafira Alghamdi, a Saudi pediatrician, was on vacation here the other day, shopping with two Saudi friends, and volunteered how Arab husbands often ignore their wives, while on “Noor,” within what remains to Arabs a familiar context of arranged marriages, respect for elders and big families living together, Noor and Muhannad openly love and admire each other. “A lot of Saudi men have gotten seriously jealous of Muhannad because their wives say, ‘Why can’t you be more like him?’ Dr. Alghamdi said. Meanwhile, she was illustrating another consequence of the show: the sudden, spectacular boom in Arab tourism to Turkey. Millions of Arabs now flock here. Turkish Airlines has started direct flights to gulf countries (using soap stars as spokespeople). Sina Kologlu, the television critic for Milliyet, a Turkish daily, phrased it “U.S. cultural imperialism is finished. Years ago we took reruns of ‘Dallas’ and ‘The Young and the Restless.’ Now Turkish screenwriters have learned to adapt these shows to local themes with Muslim storylines, Turkish production values have improved, and Asians and Eastern Europeans are buying Turkish series, not American or Brazilian or Mexican ones. They get the same cheating and the children out of wedlock and the incestuous affairs but with a Turkish sauce on top.”
NY Times

PBS Makes Progress on File-Based Delivery
Set-top software vendors are winning fresh business as cable operators start to speed up their deployment of Tru2way, the Cable- Labs-developed software specification that allows programmers and operators to deliver standardized interactive applications to a range of digital cable devices. PBS' multi-year effort to create a new transmission system that delivers programming to public TV stations as compressed digital files may finally be coming to fruition, after delays due to lapses in federal funding, management changes and technology hurdles. PBS has already installed "catch servers" for its Next Generation Interconnection System-Non-Real-Time Program File Delivery Project (NGIS-NRT) at 15 stations for "alpha" testing, and if beta testing is successful this fall, it could begin a phased rollout to some 180 licensees by year-end. The NRT system is the second phase of NGIS, a federally funded, 10-year, $120 million initiative to overhaul the transmission infrastructure that PBS, along with American Public Television (APT) and the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA), uses to deliver about 200 hours of programming each week to public TV stations. The first phase of NGIS, which replaced satellite receivers at stations and shifted linear feeds to a new SES satellite (AMC-21), was completed through 2007 and 2008. Since only about 25% of PBS programming consists of live feeds that are "passed through" and broadcast locally at the same time, PBS is seeking a more efficient way to deliver content that will be recorded, stored and played at a later date. PBS eventually wants to take advantage of MPEG-4 compression to significantly cut down on its satellite bandwidth, and the catch servers would need to transcode MPEG-4 files to MPEG-2 to work with legacy servers.
Broadcasting & Cable

Google to Unveil One-Click Payment System
On Thursday, word seemed to quietly leak out, in Italian no less, that Google would soon unveil a one-click payment system for content called “Newspass.” According to the newspaper La Repubblica, Google, a brand built on free apps for consumers, is creating the infrastructure for a system that would allow publishers to charge readers for content. “Later this year, Google will launch an integrated payment system that will allow users to buy (news content) with one click and publishers to use a single infrastructure for web, mobile and tablet to monetize their content,” the article suggested. So has Google, sometimes vilified as “tech tapeworms in the intestines of the Internet” for allegedly free-riding on publisher’s handiwork, suddenly decided to mend their ways? And if there has been some big change of heart, is the company now implementing some secret plan to become the toll keeper of a new paid news ecosystem? And even if it is, is it that big of a deal, anyway? No, not really, and we’ll see. As reported by the Italian newspaper, under the plan, consumers will have a single log-in across different content sites that would be flexible enough to accommodate various kinds of payments, including long-term subscriptions and one-time micropayments. As explained, people who surf for content behind a pay wall will see a single icon next to it and be able to one-click pay for access, similar to Google Checkout. Even though some of the details are new, there has been nothing secret about these plans. Google has been saying for years that they have both civic and self-interest in making sure that there is a well-funded flow of reliable news and within the last year, they have committed over and over to helping publishers make that happen, including helping them get paid for their content if that is the road they choose.
Media Decoder

Apple Unclear on Racy Apps Policy
After a winter purge in which it rid its iTunes store of apps with sexual or other material deemed racy, is Apple lightening up? Given Apple’s supposed nudity ban, some were surprised to see the June iPhone/iPad version of GQ ($4.99 per issue) with cover model Miranda Kerr dressed down to her stockings and a deep tan. Cosmopolitan has a saucy Sex Position of the Day ($1.99), with step-by-step instructions and colorful illustrations. Apple also is cool with Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit app, updated in May, with little more than videos of its models. Additionally, there are many other apps offering sex advice and photos of scantily clad women. Yet Apple has rejected other relationship service, gay culture and political content, fueling charges that it’s applying a double standard to its app offerings. (Playboy has an app, but it’s a nudity-free preview of the magazine.) “It’s a form of censorship, and having to have Apple approve your content is kind of concerning,” said Joe Landry, svp, group publisher of Here Media, a publisher of gay-themed media. “It is a challenge to understand where the line gets drawn from a content standpoint,” added Jeanniey Mullen, global evp and CMO of digital publishing platform Zinio. When full replicas of Playboy and Penthouse can be read on a PC but not on the iPad, she explained, “It is confusing to consumers.” A request for comment from Apple was not returned by deadline.
MediaWeek

Webbies Honor 'Father of the Internet'
"You ain't seen nothing yet." It's the five-word speech that both captured and wrapped up the awesomeness of the geek-meets-chic week otherwise known as Internet Week New York, a creative synthesis of panels, conferences, launches, and cocktail schmoozers that doesn't get much mainstream mention, but perhaps as those five words predict, soon will. Internet Week, now in its third year, came to a close Monday night at Cipriani's on Wall Street with a decently star-studded celebration of the very best and brightest behind the online world at the annual Webby Awards. Hosted by funnyman BJ Novak (The Office), the Webbys, now in its fourteenth year, was like a watered-down version of the MTV Movie Awards. There's no competition for attention among the honorees that make certain Hollywood award ceremonies the circus acts we see today. Instead, there's a sort of joie de vivre, an inspiring burst of intellectual excitement, that triumphed around the room among the hundreds of brilliantly creative minds seated at table after table. With a Twitteresque tinge to it, winners are allowed just five words for acceptance speeches, and style points seem to be awarded for the overtly silly or salacious. The five word cliché that started this article? Those words were the acceptance speech of the man who made it possible for you to connect to this site and read this piece, and, for the most part these days, do just about everything else your life entails, whether directly or indirectly. You might not know Vinton Cerf if you saw him on the street, but at the very least, you owe him some gesture of gratitude. Widely considered the "Father of the Internet," Cerf took this year's Lifetime Achievement honors, and deservedly so. Of course, if Cerf's speech holds true, then the Webbys should one day be as prominent as the Oscars, Grammys, Tonys, and Golden Globes. And Internet Week, at that point, should be one of the hottest tickets in the world. This year nearly 200 events were held. "The success of the week is really just a reflection of how much energy and enthusiasm there is for this industry, and how that's grown in the last year," said Davies. "It is really exploding." And apparently, somehow, that explosion is just a byte of what's to come. Complete list here: http://www.webbyawards.com/press/speeches.php
WCBS

Best Webby Speeches
At last night’s Webby Awards, where a five-word acceptance speech is the only barrier between the winners and a room full of scoffs and harsh judgment from peers, the offerings turned out to be a tad disappointing. Last year, Jimmy Fallon’s “Thank God, Conan got promoted” was honest, self-deprecating, and personal, without being an inside joke that no one could understand. In other words, everything a five-worder should be.

This year, however, contained a number of offenses. First, you had the cheaters (BBDO – “Please visit bbdoacceptancespeech.com”), followed by the overtly commercial (NYTimes.com – “All the news that’s fit.”), and worst of all, the downright boring (BBC News’ “About to become even better.”). Groan.

Others chose to use their five words for a cause. OK Go went with “Fight for net neutrality now,” while Isabella Rossellini, accepting for Green Porno, took on the oil spill (and if you have that kind of filthy mind, a nod to her series): “I say, plug the hole.” Alrighty then! If I were giving out awards for last night’s speeches, here’s how it’d go down:

WTF AWARD
Buzz Aldrin – “Humanity. Colonization. Phobos. Monolith. Mars!”

BEST USE OF NOSTALGIA
Pandora – “Didn’t kill the radio star”

THEY’RE PROBABLY TOTALLY SINCERE AWARD
CNET.com – “Found iPhone 5? Call CNet.”

HE’S POSSIBLY NOT TOTALLY SINCERE? AWARD
Selleckwaterfallsandwich.tumblr.com – “Mom, I’m not on drugs.”

BURRRRRN AWARD
Arianna Huffington – “Goldman Sachs shorted my speech.”

BEST (AND ONLY) USE OF THE WORDS “DANCE PARTY”
Amy Poehler – “Me. You. P.S.22. Dance party.”

BEST CROWD PLEASER (tie)
Robert Scheer from Truthdig.com – “Wall Street: What f—king thieves.”
Roger Ebert – “Veni, vidi, vici.” (Yes, he’s so awesome, he only needed three words.)

SPECIAL AWARD – THE BUZZY
Jake and Amir from collegehumor.com – “Holy f—ing s–t, Buzz Aldrin!”

EW Popwatch

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The Marketing Ideanet is a free idea sharing newsletter published by 602 Communications. We are a TV training and consulting company that specializes in improving front-line news and marketing skills. Check out thousands of cutting edge examples at our web site. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

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Graeme Newell
602 Communications
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Graeme Newell's Marketing Ideanet 6/17/2010

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Share your creative work with your promo peers on the 602communications.com site. Just email it to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Flash (.flv) or QuickTime (.mov) files, size 320 x 240, are preferred, but WindowsMedia (.wmv) files will also be accepted. Large files may be sent via http://www.yousendit.com. You can also mail your clip a DVD to Graeme Newell at 1011 Lyndhurst Falls Lane, Knightdale, NC 27545.

RTDNA Announces Murrow Award Winners
The Radio-Television Digital News Association's 2010 National Edward R. Murrow Awards for excellence in electronic journalism were pretty evenly distributed among cable and broadcast networks and TV stations, though online was dominated by The AP and newspapers. In all, 59 news organizations received 89 awards. NBC News won for overall excellence in the network category. It also picked up awards for best breaking news coverage, best hard news reporting and best newscast. CBS picked up four awards as well for video feature reporting, documentary, news series, and investigative reporting. ABC collected one award for continuing coverage and co-owned ESPN another for sport reporting. CNN took home one award, for best TV network Web site, MSNBC won for best writing and Global TV for best use of video. On the station side, KHOU had already been named best overall large-market station but picked up another for best documentary. KARE-TV Minneapolis was also a double winner, for feature reporting and best newscast. The other large market awards were pretty well distributed geographically, from best breaking news coverage for WJLA-TV Washington to investigative reporting for KMGH-TV Denver to continuing coverage for WXIA-TV/WATL-TV Atlanta. In the online coverage category, AP swept the national awards with "bests" in continuing coverage, feature reporting, hard news, investigative, documentary and news series. Click here for a complete list of the winners.
Multichannel

POTUS Speech Down in Viewership
One in five households with television sets watched President Obama’s Oval Office address about the Gulf oil spill disaster on Tuesday night, according to The Nielsen Company. An average of 24 million households and 32 million people tuned in to the almost-20-minute address, according to Nielsen, which only counts at-home viewing. Only a handful of telecasts – the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards, the finale of “American Idol” – can garner more viewers than a presidential address in prime time. But the Tuesday night ratings hint at some fatigue among Americans, either toward President Obama or toward the oil spill. Mr. Obama’s last speech in prime time, the State of the Union last January, had an average of 48 million viewers, and attracted nearly 30 percent of the households with TV sets. His prime time speech about the war in Afghanistan the prior month had an average of 41 million viewers and about 26 percent of those households. The Nielsen average for Tuesday combines the viewers across the 11 channels that carried the presidential address.
Media Decoder

World Cup Opener Draws 80% Gains for ABC, ESPN
Despite a dearth of balls hitting the back of the net, ESPN and ABC rang up large gains with its opening weekend coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup from South Africa. Through the first eight matches from June 11-13, The Walt Disney Co. networks averaged 3 million households and nearly 4.25 million viewers, gains of 75% and 80%, respectively, from the similar span of the 2006 World Cup from Germany, which averaged 1.72 million households and 2.36 million watchers, according to Nielsen data. (The ratings and viewership numbers are based on the two-hour match windows and exclude the half-hour pre-match studio coverage.) The Nielsen results received a significant boost from ABC's June 12 telecast of the U.S.-England draw, which scored with a 7.3 national rating and just under 13 million viewers, the most for a men's national team match since 1994. By way of comparison, the U.S. team's first match in the 2006 World Cup -- a 3-0 throttling at the head and feet of the Czech Republic -- drew a 2.4 rating on ESPN2. As for digital media, nearly 1.3 million viewers viewed live and encore World Cup matches on broadband service ESPN3.com over the first three days of the tournament, generating 73.6 million minutes of viewing (almost an hour per viewer). The number of minutes viewed in the opening three days is almost as many as ESPN3.com had for the entire month of June 2009, according to officials at the sports programmer. World Cup content on ESPN.com -- including ESPN Soccernet.com and ESPN Deportes.com -- delivered 13.2 million visits and 47.4 million page views, with users spending an average of 10 minutes per visit engaging with World Cup content. ESPN.com's home page, which prominently featured World Cup news, video and scores, saw 27.7 million visits and 60.9 million page views from Friday through Sunday. Almost 1.3 million video views came from World Cup highlights, news and analysis content on ESPN.com. ESPN's mobile offerings -- ESPN Mobile Web, ESPN 2010 FIFA World Cup App, ESPN ScoreCenter App -- scored 11.7 million visits and 70.3 million page views to World Cup content. Moreover, the mobile platforms yielded 761,000 video views in those days.
MultiChannel

Cable Finds Tweet Success Social Sites
For the premiere of its original movie Meet My Mom, Hallmark Channel gave viewers control of its Facebook site, adding a wall of user-generated video. The so-called “V-Wall” allowed its users to curate and publish videos, photos and notes through tabs on Facebook to celebrate moms and military families leading up to and following the movie’s airing on Mother’s Day weekend. (It was later repurposed to connect pet lovers in time for launch of the May original movie, You Lucky Dog.) “With the Mom effort, we took in about 1,000 tributes; we watched our Facebook fans grow by 12,000,” said Pam Slay, senior vice president of network program publicity for Hallmark Channels. Most of the biggest cable networks are going social, drawing Twitter followers and Facebook fans in the thousands. Almost every network large and small is a robust player in this platform with the shows, the stars — and even some characters — joining in on the multiplatform conversation. Oxygen.com, for one, allows fans to chat with stars before, during and after the airing of a show, in real time. And smaller networks such as Logo, TV One and Hallmark Channel are pumping up the volume. “It actually drove our parent company’s core [greeting card] business, because people were saying, ‘Don’t forget to get something for your mom,’ ” said Hallmark’s Slay. Cable operators are also using social networks to better listen to customer needs and market new services, said Alexander Dudley, vice president of public relations for Time Warner Cable. And hardware makers are on the case, too. Motorola is working on technology that would allow viewers to start an on-TV-screen chat session with others watching the same show. “At its core, we see social media as how we can connect and interact and talk to our consumers,” said Tricia Melton, senior vice president of entertainment marketing for TBS, TNT and Turner Classic Movies, who will oversee the social outreach efforts for 11 shows scheduled to air this summer. And plenty of advertisers are interested in what programmers are doing in the social space. “It’s no longer just about eyeballs, because through social media, you really want to get your users or fans really engaged around your brand — and ideally to the advertiser’s messages as well,” said Bravo senior vice president of digital media Lisa Hsia.
MultiChannel

Syfy Covers All Promo Bases for WH13
Syfy is putting marketing moxie behind Warehouse 13, setting the tone for its summer slate. "This is our most successful show, and we think it can even get a little big bigger," senior VP of brand and strategic marketing Blake Callaway said of the dramedy that in its first season averaged 4.1 million total viewers, 2.1 million adults ages 25-54 and a 2.9 household rating, based on Nielsen live plus seven days' data. Syfy has five new and returning shows launching over two weeks in July, and is pouring promotion dollars behind Warehouse 13 to start them off with a bang. For season one of WH13, Syfy did some small, attention-getting promotions, including eye-catching tags on objects at flea markets that drove viewers to Syfy.com. The connection: Warehouse 13 is centered on a huge storage facility with thousands of paranormally powered objects. This summer, Warehouse 13 will be advertised in summer blockbuster films and backing outdoor media in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit, Syfy will promote the show in more than 1,300 fast-food restaurants like Carl's Jr., KFC and Wendy's. Syfy's taken on the challenge of doing "tweecaps" -- episode summaries of 140 characters or less -- on Twitter. In every episode, a symbol of the astrological calendar will be hidden or referenced, driving viewers to Syfy.com's Warehouse 13 site to point out where they spotted that week's symbol. Callaway said that will be a way to track viewer response through the summer. Syfy.com's WH13 site will have new games such as an "Agent Profile Center," where users can create their own agent profiles; it's also available as an iPhone App. WH13 will be seen on YouTube, Facebook, Meebo, and Takeover Yahoo! Messenger, along with custom content (including video embedding and season pass recaps) created for digital distribution partners from iTunes, XBox 360, Zune, Amazon.com, Hulu, IMDb and Sony Play Station. "This time, we decided drive a big truck up the middle and get all our bases covered," Callaway said.
MultiChannel

MSNBC, CNBC Sites See Record Traffic
A pair of NBC Universal digital properties both enjoyed record traffic surges this past May, driven in part by interest in the BP oil spill and the volatile stock market. First off, MSNBC.com—a joint venture between NBCU and Microsoft—delivered a record 154 million total video streams in May, a healthy surge a 59 percent versus last year. That up tick in video usage occurred as many users logged on to view news clips tracking the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as well as numerous Today show videos and the new daily recap show Today in 2 Minutes. Meanwhile, CNBC.com reached an audience zenith in May as well; per comScore, the site attracted over six million unique visitors for the first time who generated 326 million page views, also a record. Those figures are miles from just a few years ago, when CNBC.com struggled to reach 1.5 million unique users (according to Nielsen Online). CNBC.com’s reach boost was driven in part by Wall Street’s May 6, meltdown, which resulted in the site’s biggest traffic hour ever. The same can be said for CNBC’s mobile, which saw its page views soar by 154 percent at the 3:00 p.m. EST hour that day. Overall, CNBC’s mobile traffic generated a record 100 million page views in May, including both its mobile Web site and iPhone App.
MediaWeek

Al-Jazeera Expands US Presence Via New Media
Frustrated by its continuing inability to crack the American television market, Al-Jazeera English's new strategy is to make itself available for free on every other possible screen. The Qatar-based news network said its 24-hour newscast has been streamed over the Internet for 18 months. The company said it will expand its presence on various smart phones, is launching an iPad application and is aggressively distributing content through Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The network also says that its "Initiative for Internet Freedom" takes a stance against pay walls being put in place for any of its news content. "We feel our news and programming is a public resource that should be distributed to as many people as possible," said Tony Burman, the network's managing director. Burman said Al-Jazeera English hasn't given up on increasing its television distribution, and sees some encouraging signs. But he said the changing media world, where people seek information in other places, makes that resistance less important every day. Since its launch as the English-language offshoot of the Arabic Al-Jazeera Network, AJE has found it virtually impossible to win a space on an American cable or satellite system. It is currently available only on cable systems in Washington, in Toledo, Ohio, and in Burlington, Vt. Some individual AJE newscasts are shown through Link TV on the DirecTV and DISH Network satellite systems. Burman blamed a "very aggressive hostility" toward Al-Jazeera from the Bush administration for making cable and satellite companies reluctant to show the network. He said the Obama administration seems more willing to deal with the network since it has taken office and hopes there could soon be a change in heart among providers. The network's executives hope the wide availability of AJE on other platforms will show cable systems that there is interest in the programming. During the three months that Al-Jazeera English has streamed its programming on the iPhone and iPod Touch devices, one-third of the times they were viewed was in the United States, the network said. Similarly, one-third of the times network programming was posted on YouTube it was from within the U.S.
Yahoo News

News Corp. Unveils Digital Deals
News Corp. unveiled two digital media deals on Monday as it continues to push for business models that allow it to make money of its news content on digital platforms. The company said it has acquired Skiff LLC, Hearst Corporation's e-reading platform that allows delivery of premium journalism to tablets, smartphones, e-readers and netbooks. The conglomerate also unveiled an investment in Journalism Online LLC, a venture dedicated to enabling news providers to collect revenue from their online readership. "Today's developments underscore News Corporation's ongoing commitment to create strong business models that support journalism at a time of great change in our industry," said chief digital officer Jon Miller. "Both Skiff and Journalism Online serve as key building blocks in our strategy to transform the publishing industry and ensure consumers will have continued access to the highest quality journalism." News Corp. didn't disclose the financial terms of the two transactions.
Hollywood Reporter

BSkyB Shares Up As It Rejects News Corp Offer
Shares in BSkyB soared Tuesday (June 15), trading up over to 715 pence ($10.54) per share after the satcaster rejected News Corp's 700 pence ($10.32) per share takeover offer as "undervalued," and suggested that it would hold out for an offer somewhere north of 800 pence ($11.80) News Corp's bid for the 61% of the satcaster it does not already own, values the British sport and movies giant at £7.8 billion ($11.5 billion). The deal would allow News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch to consolidate cashflow from the hugely cash-generative British pay TV giant into News Corp. to perhaps fund further acquisitions. The long-mooted deal has also crystallized as a genuine possibility at a time when the value of sterling is low and when a new right-of-center British political administration may be much more minded to favor the deal than its predecessors. Regulatory oversight is still expected to take over a year. A deal would also complete the Murdoch family's perhaps sentimental desire to retake control of the satcaster that Rupert Murdoch launched 25 years ago, a financial gamble which at the time almost brought News Corp. to its knees. In subsequent years BSkyB has made huge investment in its platform, in the range and platforms on which viewers can access its content and in being the first to launch new technical propositions such as Internet access, DVR facilities, HD and 3D services.
Hollywood Reporter

Hulu Launches Ad Personalization Tool
Hulu has started asking viewers directly whether the ads they receive are relevant. The video powerhouse has rolled out a new ad personalization tool called Ad Tailor, aimed at improving the relevance of video ads on the site by solliciting users feedback. Specifically, as ads are playing on Hulu, users are now presented with an icon in the upper right hand corner the site’s revamped video player which reads “Is this ad relevant to you?” Viewers can click either yes or no (previously they could click thumbs up or thumbs down). Over time, Hulu says it will use such feedback to show users different, more relevant ads. Also toward that end, Hulu said that it plans to occasionally serve short surveys—consisting of one or a couple of questions relating to that ad. Users who opt to answer more questions will be able to watch some more content on the site without any ads.
MediaWeek

Web Ad Spending to Surge, eMarketer Predicts
The online ad market is ascendant once again. Online advertising spending will surge by 10.8 percent in 2010 to $25.1 billion, according to a new report released by the digital researcher eMarketer. That double-digit growth prediction would seem to provide a clear sign that the market has bounced back from a rough 2009, during which eMarketer tracked nearly a five percent spending decline. In fact, the 10.8 figure is nearly double eMarketer’s previous spend growth estimate of 5.5 percent. The faster than expected growth in the U.S. economy, along with a demonstrated willingness by businesses to increase spending in Q1 both contributed to the revised estimate, says the report. Interestingly, considering the ever increasing array of choices for digital media buyers—including ad exchanges and networks—the Web’s biggest portals and search engines still dominate. eMarketer predicts that Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL will garner 58.5 percent of U.S. Online ad spending in 2010. The lion’s share of dollars should once again go to Google, according to the report. Google’s revenues rose 21 percent in Q1, providing a clear sign that the market was on the way up, given Google’s prominence. Per the report, 49.3 percent of all online dollars are allocated to search advertising, far and away Google’s core business. Search will continue to command the largest percentage of new dollars coming online over the next few years, according to the report. The next hottest category? Online video advertising, which eMarketer predicts will account for a third of the $13.6 billion-plus incremental dollars that enter the online ad market from 2010 through 2014.
MediaWeek

Half Of Shoppers Watch TV Before Going To Store: Study
Almost half (48%) of shoppers were watching TV in the hour (42 minutes, to be exact) before going shopping. That is according further findings from a study by the Council For Research Excellence. The study was actually released in 2008, but CRE released what it called further data "mined" from that Video Consumer Mapping (VCM) study conducted by Ball State University. Not surprisingly, once they got to the store, most shoppers were concentrated on the business at hand. Only 17% were on their mobile phones, only 16% viewed live TV and only 7% viewed some other type of video while in the stores. CRE recognizes that those figures are a bit long in the tooth: "[T]hese particular findings would need to be balanced today against the significant advances in mobile-phone technology since the study's completion." Among the other newly extracted findings, most (86%) consume media with their meals and 62% while they are preparing them. According to the study, a lot of those meals are single portions. More than two thirds (69%) of TV viewing is solitary.
MultiChannel

Message From Michael
ILLEGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM: That’s more or less what the rest of the world had to say when it came to the Internet. Because basically to get from Point A to Point B on the Internet, you needed to know Latin. Okay, not really, but sort of. All domain names are Latin – meaning basically English or European. So, for example, the citizen journalism site OhMyNews (which recently celebrated its 10th Birthday) has a dot-com extension, even though the site itself is in Korean. (There is an excellent English version.) The group that oversees all domain names, ICANN, (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), has approved the first set of Internationalized Domain names (IDN), which means that soon we will see domain names in Arabic, Russian, Chinese and Indian languages. Think that’s not such a big deal? Well, the folks at ICANN say it is the “biggest technical change” to the Internet since its birth 40 years ago. Why? Think of this. In India, for example, only ten percent of that country’s Billion-plus population speaks English – one of the reasons given for the low Internet penetration there. The addition of IDN has just added nearly a Billion more potential users in India alone. Add in all the Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi, Russian non-English users and… you get the picture. Now, for perspective, there is some concern that the IDN’s, because of translation issues, will add even more confusion to the online world and make scams and phishing expeditions even more possible. And, just because I wonder about such things, the ICANN policy board is made up of 18 members, 11 of whom are from the U-S-A. BTW, if you go to the ICANN website, it is available in six languages; five others, including Italian and Portuguese, are on the language bar but for some reason are grayed out and not accessible.

IGNORANCE IS BLISS. The vast majority of Americans (91%) are satisfied with their broadband speed and a significant majority (71%) believe that they are getting the broadband speed their provider is promising either “always” or “most of the time,” according to a survey by the Federal Communication Commission. Now, those figures would be interesting enough on their own, but what makes them particularly interesting is another figure from the survey – 80% don’t even know what their broadband speed is. (Ergo – my headline.) The survey is part of the federal government’s effort to develop a national Broadband plan. So, what next? Well, for starters, the FCC is offering consumers a way to test their Internet speed from their website http://www.broadband.gov. But to do so, you must fill out a form, explaining whether you are accessing from your home or business, what size is the business and what is the actual specific street address. Harmless enough, as the CommLawBlog from the telecommunications law firm of Fletcher, Heald and Hildreth notes. Except that when you read the fine print, the firm says, there are eight instances in which the FCC can disclose the information you provide – none of which require a warrant or subpoena but which cover a very broad legal ground. And, of course, as most message readers know, there are a dozen or more ways to test your Internet speed. None of which requires any disclosure of information. But it gets better. Despite the recent controversy about privacy, the FCC is looking for 10,000 volunteers willing to put a box in their home so the federal government can monitor “every bit and byte of their home Web use,” as MIT’s Technology Review puts it, with the additional commentary about what an “audacious” request that is. And it keeps getting better. The box? It’s called “Sam Knows Whitebox.” As the CommLawBlog author notes, “we couldn’t make this stuff up.” BTW, if you’re interested, the FCC volunteer-seeking website is https://www.testmyisp.com.

SIDENOTE – PERSPECTIVE: Some facts and figures to put this in perspective. Two-thirds of the U.S. homes (63.5%) have Broadband, according to Nielsen’s latest three-screen report. That’s up 24% from a year ago (60.7%), and is nearly double the DVR penetration (36.6%). And while still considerably ahead of HDTV penetration (52.7%), HDTV growth is much faster – a nearly 189% increase since last year. America ranks 28th in Broadband speed worldwide, according to broadband research firm Ookla’s NetIndex.com website. The average speed of 10.02 Mbps though is well ahead of the average worldwide speed of 7.68. But it is a third that of world leader South Korea (33.76 Mbps) and half that of Japan (20.44 Mbps) and Sweden (20.17 Mbps). Of course, it should be noted, as broadband providers in the U.S. are quick to point out, most of the countries with higher speeds are much smaller. Equally large Russia, for example is ranked 27th (at 10.14 Mbps) just barely ahead of the U.S. Massive China ranks 72nd (3.54 Mbps) and not-quite-so-massive India ranks 127th (1.38 Mbps).

Okay, I know I bombard people with too many numbers some times in the message, but one more set of figures to add perspective. According to the Akamai State of the Internet report, the U.S. ranks 22nd in average “connection speed” with a lowly 3.8 Mbps. South Korea is still tops but with a much lower 11.7 Mbps average speed, and the average connection speed worldwide is only 1.7 Mbps, according to Akamai, which of course is only testing its Internet connections. On another measurement scale, the U.S. ranks much higher with more unique IP addresses than any place in the world (125 Million).

FOOTNOTE: A group of powerful tech and media companies have formed a coalition they call the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group. And when we say powerful… well, here are some of the members: Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Comcast, TimeWarner, Intel, EchoStar and Verizon. The stated purpose is to develop broadband management techniques and deal with technical issues that “can affect Internet users’ experience.” Not to be outdone, the FCC has created its own select group of invitation-only broadband engineers to a brainstorming session later this month on how to use broadcast spectrum for broadband service.

YOU TALK TOO MUCH. At least that’s what AT&T has said to some users, instituting a tiered payment system for iPhone users based on how much data they think they will use. This is somewhat similar to the plan AT&T and Comcast both have toyed with, to cap bandwidth users. But so far, no howls of indignation about the IPhone plan. Even Consumer Reports gave the plan its blessing (sort of), noting that only four percent of IPhone users consumer more than a gigabyte of data month. But, observers note that as the data-chomping iPad begins eating up more bandwidth, the tune may change. And that’s only the start of it. Internet equipment and backbone supplier Cisco says Internet traffic will quadruple by the year 2014. The company projects traffic of 64 Exabytes of data per month by then, most of it (91%, to be exact) video. But better than the data and numbers supplied by the company are the factoids – and you know, how I love factoids. The company says that by 2014 it would take more than two years to watch all the video crossing the Global IP network… in just in one second. To watch ALL the video crossing IP networks that year would take 72 Million years. Internet provider Akamai has its own version of web traffic monitoring on its State of the Internet website which, when I checked it, showed that there were 346,000 people listening to music at that very minute worldwide, another 3,352,000 people worldwide shopping (or at least visiting retail sites); and news sites (as defined by Akamai) were averaging more than 5,712,000 visitors a minute worldwide.

YOU WORRY ME TO DEATH. That’s the next line in the Clarence Carter song (did anybody catch it?). And the growth in the Internet has many people worried because, for one thing, along with that increased usage comes an increase in “attack traffic”, according to Akamai’s State of the Internet report for the fourth quarter of 2009 (the latest I could find.) As in previous reports, Russia remains the “top attack traffic source” accounting for more than one in ten (13%) attacks worldwide. The U.S. made it back to second place, ahead of China and Brazil. But what was particularly interesting was the increase in unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai’s network – 4.7% from the third quarter of 2009 to fourth quarter 2009, 16% from the same period in 2008, but up 54% from two years before. Interesting because it corresponds to a report from global marketing research firm IDC which warns of a coming logjam because of a lack of a lack of IP addresses. The firm says there are already more than 10 BILLION “non-PC” devices connected to the Internet right now, and that number is expected to double to 20 Billion by 2014. The key point being ‘non-pc’, as in not your computer, but the decoder at your station, the printer at your newspaper, the audio board at your radio station. As Marketing Vox put it, the shortage of IP addresses is this decade’s version of the Millennium Bug. The solution is for businesses to switch from Internet Protocol Version 4 (Ipv4) to Ipv6, but while the behemoths of the business (Google, YouTube, etc) are aware of this, many content providers are not.

CHICKEN LITTLE MAY HAVE BEEN RIGHT. The sky is falling. It’s official. The Pentagon says so. The problem is that there is so much space junk (old rockets, abandoned satellites and missile shrapnel) and so many satellites that there is a logjam in space. In an article in The Washington Post, Indian rocket scientist Bharath Gopalaswamy estimates there are 370,000 ‘pieces of junk’ in low orbit, flying around with 1,100 satellites. The recent report of a drifting satellite threatening other satellites is peanuts compared to an incident three years ago. According to the Pentagon report, a Chinese missile test destroyed a satellite in 2007, leaving 150,000 pieces of junk behind. The Washington Post article puts the “space-services” market at $250 Billion, between financial communication, GPS, and international phones.

Michael Castengera is an instructor at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia AND President of Media Strategies and Tactics Inc., a consulting firm that works with all media but primarily broadcasting. You can visit his website at MediaConsultant.tv.

Top Ten Reasons Americans Don't Like Soccer

10. Too many foreigners

9. Loud horns make it hard to nap through boring parts

8. Bench clearing brawls not as much fun without bats or sticks

7. No theme song asking if we are ready for some soccer

6. Not enough 'roids

5. Lots of players with umlauts in their names

4. Americans too busy reading

3. Doesn't have the heart-pounding action of a 5-hour baseball game

2. No TV timeouts means fewer snack breaks to stuff our fat faces

1. Too much kicking, not enough rasslin'

The Late Show with David Letterman

-------------------------------
The Marketing Ideanet is a free idea sharing newsletter published by 602 Communications. We are a TV training and consulting company that specializes in improving front-line news and marketing skills. Check out thousands of cutting edge examples at our web site. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

Sent via TVSpy's email servers. Visit TV Spy's Marketing Matters.

Graeme Newell
602 Communications
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Graeme Newell's Marketing Ideanet 6/14/2010

The Marketing Ideanet is a free idea sharing newsletter published by 602 Communications. We are a TV training and consulting company that specializes in improving front-line news and marketing skills. Check out thousands of cutting edge examples at our web site. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

Sent via TVSpy's email servers. Visit TV Spy's Marketing Matters.

Graeme Newell
602 Communications
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(919) 217-4438
Web Site
Facebook
Twitter

In This Issue
Marketing TV Brands with Social Media Optimization
Outlook Solid for TV, Forecaster Predicts
Upfront Market Reflects Bounce
US-England Draws 13 Million Viewers
The Most Watched TV Series in The World is....
Music Awards Brings CMT Record Ratings
Key Art Awards Given for Best in Movie Marketing
Fox Biz Net Opens Doors for Libertarian Talkers
Little People Object to Spike TV Over 'Midget' Term
Late Night Wave Fail
Consumer Wins Chance to Be Ad Star
BP Twitter Parody Ruffles BP's Feathers
BPGlobalPR Tweets

Quotes

"The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."
- Charled A. Beard

Marketing TV Brands with Social Media Optimization
by Graeme Newell
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
http://www.602communications.com
Twitter: gnewell
Facebook: facebook.com/gnewell

You've probably heard of SEO, search engine optimization, but there is a new term you should be familiar with, SMO, which stands for social media optimization. SEO is the science of influencing search engine results from the big services like Google. SMO is the science of generating on-line buzz. It is about optimizing a website so it can be more social media friendly. Sites that use SMO make it easy for readers to pass along their favorites to friends and coworkers. It is the sophisticated science of understanding how readers adopt, personalize and share web content.

This is more than just putting "e-mail to a friend" links on the website. SMO sites offer readers sophisticated tools that let them easily communicate with as many other sites as possible. One site becomes a tacit social media partner allowing both to tap the other's fans.

SMO has really caught on with the traditional search marketing community. Google is a fairly recent phenomenon and in the past ten years, SEO specialists have primarily focused on the algorithm mechanics of search. It has been more about math than psychology.

Great social media techniques will not necessarily affect your search engine ranking, but it can drastically increase site engagement. These days, it is becoming increasingly hard to compete using just search engine optimization. Social media optimization is becoming increasingly important because it gives small companies a chance to compete with the big boys through the sheer art of buzz. The little guys can't compete with big company search engine algorithms, but they sure can get some attention by sparking vast amounts of gab about their products.

SEO specialists know that a personal referral holds much more weight than a bot's recommendation, and they are trying hard to integrate these relationship drivers into their tactics. Part of the problem is that the metrics for social media have yet to be worked out. Facebook is an environment where friends and family have meaningful interaction with the most important people in their lives. It just makes sense that a click here is worth more than a click on some other random web site. But we have yet to figure out how to measure this kind of engagement.

Right now we live in a world of page views, uniques, and time spent on site. But how do you quantify buzz? How do you place a value on a casual but highly trusted referral comment left by a friend? There are a tremendous number of social media conversations about our products that have yet to find a metric that assesses their true value. There are some real gems but we just haven't found a way to measure them.

Social media optimization is about passing content along, and a unique connection with customers that goes beyond just product features. Companies that rely heavily on social media build a community and a team of brand ambassadors who truly believe in their product. For these fans, it isn't just a product, they incorporate the brand into their own identity. These groupies are willing to share their beliefs with other people. More importantly, they carry their message to the nether regions of the internet where traditional advertisers might never venture. They recruit new fans in places you'd never expect.

Apple is a great example of this. Any time a new product is even rumored, entire sites spring up that are dedicated to guessing what is coming. Devotees actually mock up designs with their best guess about the new Apple products. These are people with a passion. They have made a personal connection with Apple and they evangelize on the web. For them, Apple isn't a computer company - it's a lifestyle and a part of their own personal identity. Carrying that iPhone is as much about making calls as it is about making an identity statement. Apple isn't the only company with this kind of social media prowess - it has just mastered it.

One of the most powerful developments about social media is the way it is making gains against traditional search engine optimization. When Google first launched, most of us would put in our search and feel confident the top 10 results would be the most relevant. Well now search engine optimization has become a science in and of itself, and is seen as somewhat of a black art. Now, through some clever manipulation techniques, marketers have gotten better and better at moving their meaningless products up Google's results list. Our trust in Google is not what it used to be. These days, I'm not as sure that Google's top 10 will be my top 10.

Because of this, social media is melding with search engine optimization to create a whole new hybrid search/social category. This list has been prequalified by both the search algorithms and by real people who are experts in a particular subject. It provides two complimentary models for tackling a search.

For example, let's say I'm a passionate hiking enthusiast. Because I love it so much, I've gone through the Google search list and looked at all the great hiking sites on the web. I've created my own blog with the very best hiking resources I've found over the past three years. I start developing a community of fellow hiking lovers. Now, someone who's new to this category will go to Google and find my blog near the top of the list. Instead of exploring further down the Google list, they might rely on my judgment to show them the very best of the hiking world. They might see my blog’s vibrant commenting and the passionate love of the sport, and join the community. They will probably have a greater sense of trust in this community than Google's impersonal algorithm. So now I am filtering hiking material for someone else and someone else is using this information with a greater sense of trust.

This is the mindset behind sites like Delicious. People have a great trust in the passionate, yet anonymous, human beings who tag the content and give all of us guidance. Delicious is often used in tandem with the search engine mechanical model.

It's also the concept behind Wikipedia. The real human filter is the new rock star of search. A lot of the big search engines are starting to take notice. Google has initiatives using real people to organize content rather than just computers. Yahoo is doing the same thing. In the coming years we're going to see this take off, as people start to rely on others to help them make on-line choices. This means marketing disciplines like social media optimization will become more and more important.

So how do you get in on the social media optimization game? The first step is a change in thinking about how people find your product. Most marketing managers grew up using the traditional advertising model. You buy mass media, zillions of people watch your ads, and make their decisions based on these materials. Social media advertising is a communal experience where cause and effect are much less tangible. The goal is not to enroll everyone, but to enroll fans who will be brand ambassadors and spread the word on their own.

Most of us still rely on the traditional mass produced brand communication. We use terms that speak of gross impressions, not individual engagement. "Gross rating points," "page views," and "mean time spent viewing" are all measurement terms that treat audiences like they are sheep - a mass herd to be swayed through one-way communication of a cookie cutter marketing message. We're accustomed to the concept of "broadcasting." Well there is absolutely nothing "broad" about social media. It is the quintessential one-to-one experience. It requires intensive communication with a core group of product evangelists, not an auditorium-like announcement of product attributes.

Social media optimization truly is viral - and you want to spread your marketing message just like a flu bug, one person to the next, without the need for supervision. You do not have enough money, time or patience to talk to everyone, so you must enroll your own brand army to spread the word down the line. Most importantly, this requires a looser hold on the brand reins. Everyone in the company must learn to let go and be comfortable with the branding ending up in the most unexpected places. Just like Apple, you must foster a brand epidemic. If you have built the brand's foundations on solid core emotional motivators, it will weather the trip just fine, and enroll a whole new group you never expected to find.

Graeme Newell is a broadcast and cable marketing consultant who specializes in relationship branding using core emotional drivers. He guarantees that his teasing seminar will immediately increase your news ratings or his workshop is free. Find out more here.

Outlook Solid for TV, Forecaster Predicts
Television has certainly become more fragmented over the past decade, with the line between broadcast and cable blurring in the United States and DVRs slowly catching on worldwide. But there remains no more in-demand medium for advertisers than TV, and the recent recession, which is finally showing signs of lifting, has only reinforced television's importance to media buyers worldwide. A new forecast released this week by Magna Global predicts that global TV ad revenue will rise 6.4 percent this year, to $150.7 billion. Over the next five years, the average annual growth rate will be 5.4 percent, paced by Latin America, where growth will be 8.9 percent. North America, of course, will represent a huge chunk of total TV revenue, with its share rising to nearly $71 billion by 2015, or more than a third of the global total. Buyers continue to invest in television because in terms of reach no other media can compare, and that will keep it the dominant medium in ad dollars for years to come. Brian Wieser, senior vice president and director of global forecasting at Magna, talks to Media Life about the lessons of the recession, why TV is still so attractive, and why the DVR threat doesn't look all that threatening. Interview here:
MediaLife Magazine

Upfront Market Reflects Bounce
The upfront market for the sale of commercial time ahead of the start of the new television season is over for the five big English-language broadcasters, with results that represent a nice bounce from last year’s downbeat outcome. Estimates are that the total sales of the five networks — ABC, CBS, CW, Fox and NBC — may reach $8.3 billion to $8.5 billion, up between 16 and 20 percent from the poor results suffered last year during the economic downturn. Although that is good news for the broadcasters, the total still lags the sales in the upfront market two years ago, which totaled an estimated $9.1 billion to $9.2 billion. NBC said on Thursday afternoon that it had finished selling time in the upfront market, so named because the process takes place before the season begins. NBC had been the last of the five to still be talking to advertisers and agencies. ABC finished on Wednesday, a day after CBS. Fox Broadcasting and CW completed their sales last week. That means the most-watched part of the upfront market took less than two weeks to wrap up, counting from the May 20 end of the skein of presentations of shows for the 2010-11 season that were made to advertisers in New York. The pace was one of the quickest in recent years, reflecting the improving economy and the more confident attitude among most major advertisers. When times are bad, as was the case last year, the upfront market drags on and on; it took most of the summer before the broadcasters completed the upfront sales for the 2009-10 season. When times are good, or getting better, advertisers prefer to spend more money in advance, to hedge their bets that rates are only going to go higher once the season begins.
Media Decoder

US-England Draws 13 Million Viewers
The Group C match between the U.S. and England drew almost 13 million viewers, the most ever for a FIFA World Cup opening-round match in this nation and the tops for a U.S. men's national team contest since 1994. The much-anticipated June 12 telecast on ABC, which ended in a 1-1 draw, drew a 7.3 national household rating, 8.39 million households and 12.96 million watchers during the match window from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. (ET), according to fast national data from Nielsen. The three-hour telecast, including the pre-match coverage from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m., averaged a 6.1 household rating, 7.03 million households and just under 10.8 million viewers. The overall three-hour telecast ranks as the fifth all-time soccer match in the U.S. behind three World Cup finals and a round of 16 game in 1994, all televised on ABC:

1. U.S.-China, Women's WC Final (7/10/1999) - 18.0 million viewers (11.4 rating)
2. Brazil-Italy, WC Final (7/17/1994) - 14.5 (9.5 rating)
3. Brazil-U.S., Round of 16 (7/4/1994) - 13.7 (9.3 rating)
4. Italy-France, WC Final (7/9/2006) - 12.0 (7.0 rating)
5. U.S.-England, First Round (6/12/2010) - 10.8 (6.1 rating)

On the local level, U.S.-England netted its highest rating in San Diego, where it pulled an 11.5 rating, followed by an 11.2 in San Francisco, with Las Vegas third with an 11.0. Cincinnati (10.8) and Salt Lake City (10.2) rounded out the top five, according to Nielsen data.
Broadcasting & Cable

The Most Watched TV Series in The World is....
Today, Friday, June 11, 2010 at the 50th Monte Carlo TV Festival, the most-watched TV program in the world was scheduled to be honored with the annual International TV Audience Award. Last year's winner was "House." But this year's winner is "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation." This is the third time in five years that "CSI" has received this honor, according to a press announcement. According to the data, "CSI" was watched by 73.8 million viewers worldwide.
TV Week

Music Awards Brings CMT Record Ratings
CMT's June 9 premiere of the 2010 CMT Music Awards set a network viewership record for an awards event, drawing 3 million viewers. The show, hosted by Kid Rock, also averaged 1.42 million viewers in the network's key 18-49 demo, up 19% over last year's event, according to network officials. Overall, more than 10.8 million cumulative viewers tuned into all related CMT Music Awards programming, including the live Red Carpet show and encore presentations. CMT is currently streaming the full show on its website (www.cmt.com) The 2010 CMT Music Awards show featured performances from such top country music performers as Jamey Johnson, Toby Keith, Lady Antebellum, Miranda Lambert, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley, LeAnn Rimes, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban with John Mayer and the Zac Brown Band. American Idol alum Underwood won top honors during the show, taking home both the Video Of The Year award and the CMT Performance Of The Year Award. Lady Antebellum took home honors for top group video, while Lambert and Urban won best female and male video awards respectively.
MultiChannel

Key Art Awards Given for Best in Movie Marketing
The aliens from Sony's "District 9" scored big during The Hollywood Reporter's 39th annual Key Art Awards. Honoring the best in movie marketing, Friday's event at Vibiana in downtown Los Angeles saw "District 9" take home 11 awards, including the best-in-show prize for its integrating marketing campaigning as well as three other best-in-show laurels for its outdoor advertising (built around its "Bus Stop for Humans Bus Shelter"), TV spots and digital campaign. The awards ceremony culminated with Sylvester Stallone receiving the Visionary Award, given annually to a filmmaker who inspires movie marketers. "At the end of the day, there is no question that Sylvester Stallone delivers great product," THR publisher Lori Burgess said before calling Stallone to the candlelit stage at what once was the altar of the former St. Vibiana Roman Catholic cathedral, which has been converted to a party space. "He's put his stamp on film like very few people of his generation." While the Visionary Award is in its fourth year -- previous recipients were Robert Rodriguez, Judd Apatow and Sam Raimi -- Friday's festivities saw the introduction of a new, overall award for best integrating marketing. Among the movies that popped up in multiple categories, Disney/Pixar's "Up" captured eight awards, and Warner Bros.' "The Hangover" and Paramount's "Star Trek" took five apiece. Warners led the way among studios, taking home 14 awards, followed by Sony with 12 kudos and Lionsgate with 11. Ignition led all agencies with 12 wins for its work on such diverse movies as "District 9," "Precious," "Saw VI," "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" and "Coraline." Reflecting the popularity of 3D movies, the Key Arts also inaugurated two categories for 3D advertising materials. "Angels & Demons" took honors in the 3D theatrical print category for work done by BLT & Associates, Drissi Creative Studios and Sony. In the home entertainment category, the 3D packaging for "Friday the 13th Uncut and Parts 2-8," created by Soda Design and Paramount Home Entertainment, took the prize. A complete list of winners here:
Hollywood Reporter

Fox Biz Net Opens Doors for Libertarian Talkers
“Welcome to this struggle,” Andrew Napolitano said triumphantly as he wrapped up the first television episode last weekend of his libertarian talk show, “Freedom Watch.” He saluted the camera and concluded, “From New York, defending freedom, so long America.” He will be back next week, a commercial said, with a special guest, Glenn Beck. Mr. Napolitano’s struggle is for smaller government and individual liberty. “The American public needs to know and understand, the government serves you better when it serves you less. That’s the argument,” he said on the show. “Freedom Watch” is arguably Tea Party TV in its purest form to date. It is the latest product of the News Corporation, led by Rupert Murdoch, and being shown on the weekends on the Fox Business Network, which is searching for higher ratings by adding provocative commentators. Fox News already dominates the market for conservative TV talk with hosts like Mr. Beck and Sean Hannity, and has generated billions in revenue to show for it. Now, the upstart Fox Business is making room for libertarian talk, too. An aggressive pro-civil liberties, anti-government streak is evident on both “Freedom Watch” and “Stossel,” a weekly Fox Business show hosted by the former ABC News anchor John Stossel that was added last fall. As any libertarian will tell you, there are sharp differences in opinions between conservatives and libertarians, and now Fox has programs for both. “I think Fox is seeing a business opportunity here,” said Jacob G. Hornberger, the president of the Future of Freedom Foundation, a libertarian educational group. In an interview, he said, “There’s always been this debate between left and right, liberals and conservatives. All of a sudden here’s Napolitano saying, where do you stand on this libertarian position?” Libertarian commentators, he said, have largely been locked out of TV debates in the past. “Fox News created the Tea Party with the town halls last year,” said the liberal commentator Bill Press, the author of the forthcoming “Toxic Talk: How the Radical Right Has Poisoned America’s Airwaves.” Referring to “Freedom Watch,” he said, “Now they’ve given the Tea Party its own TV show.”
NY Times

Little People Object to Spike TV Over 'Midget' Term
A new reality show about vertically challenged wrestlers is seriously pissing off an organization called Little People of America ... and it's all over the word "midget." The show behind the controversy is Spike TV's "Half Pint Brawlers" -- which features several wee wrestlers who drop the M-bomb on each other about a gazillion times an episode. But the LPA claims the M-word on the show is just as offensive as "guido" on "Jersey Shore" -- because it reinforces "archaic, objectifying and stigmatizing stereotypes" about little people. The LPA suggests more politically correct alternatives like "little person," "person with dwarfism," and "person of short stature." But according to Spike TV, "Only the 'Half Pint Brawlers' use the term 'midget' in the show," and note that the Brawlers, "respectfully disagree with the LPA's assessment of the word."
TMZ

Late Night Wave Fail
How this for a crossover act? A late-night star waving across the continent — and across networks – to another late-night star. That was the carefully crafted idea cooked up by two late-night shows – until the N.H.L. took over. It was supposed to work like this: at just about 12:42 a.m. Jimmy Fallon on his “Late Night” show on NBC would pull out a big Mickey Mouse glove and wave it in the direction of Craig Ferguson on CBS’s “Late Late Show.” Mr. Ferguson would then acknowledge the wave a fraction of a second later with a wave of his own — along with his assessment of how adorable Mr. Fallon is. If this sounds like it was an easy bit of late-night camaraderie, it wasn’t. It took a complicated bit of dual timing to make something happening on a show taped in New York at about 5:30 Eastern time match up with a comment that was taped about three hours later in Los Angeles. And of course, it took a couple of shows, producers – and hosts — to want to do it. But after a day of phone calls and stopwatches to get the timing right, the final game of the N.H.L. playoff went into overtime on NBC. That pushed back the local news and the network’s late-night lineup behind it. So except for the Pacific time zone, the lovely little scheme got blown up. Here’s the background. Mr. Ferguson has for about a month been using a giant Mickey glove to wave at his audience at odd moments. Tuesday night, for no special reason, he pulled out the glove and said he was sending a wave out to Mr. Fallon. Sensing a cute idea, Michael Naidus, who produces Mr. Ferguson’s show, reached out to Mike Shoemaker, who produces Mr. Fallon’s, to ask if they would like to reciprocate. Mr. Shoemaker and Mr. Fallon liked the idea. So at Wednesday’s taping Mr. Fallon paused toward the end of his monologue to say he was aware that his competitor Mr. Ferguson had pulled out the glove the previous night and waved at him. Then Mr. Fallon pointed the glove and said Mr. Ferguson shouldn’t be telling him what to do – or it might start another late-night war. Then he paused—and waved with an aw-shucks expression. Out in California no one could see exactly when the exchange would play so the shows had to sync up their timing. That meant Mr. Ferguson did an especially short opening to his show. (He usually does an extended opening that leads into a series of commercials, then opening credits, then his monologue. Mr. Fallon meanwhile gets right on and commences his monologue, so he is often finished when Mr. Ferguson is just getting started.) On Wednesday’s taping, Mr. Ferguson simply jumped right into the monologue, did about 20 seconds and then acknowledged the wave from the East. He explained that he doesn’t like the notion of late-night wars, and added “It’s probably not the place to say it, but I love you, man.” It was a sweet idea while it lasted.
Media Decoder

Consumer Wins Chance to Be Ad Star
A 21-year-old from Highland Heights, Ky., has won a contest sponsored by Progressive Insurance to appear with Stephanie Courtney, the actress who plays the popular Flo character in Progressive advertising. The winner, Jacob Doherty, is a loan collector, the company says, and beat 2,500 other contestants who took part in a contest that began in January. The contest offered consumers a chance to appear in Progressive ads as Flo’s helpful assistant — which means it is too bad the winner’s name was not Eb. Contestants could submit video auditions to a Web site; Mr. Doherty’s submission can be watched there, at helpflo.com. Mr. Doherty was among the finalists who tested their ad skills with Ms. Courtney in Los Angeles. Mr. Doherty was “friendly, helpful and loves insurance,” Brian Silva, chief marketing officer at Progressive, said in a statement. Mr. Doherty will be paired with Ms. Courtney in a print ad that was photographed this week, which is to appear during the summer. He is also to film a television commercial with her this summer, to run later this year. The premise of the campaign is that Flo clerks at a make-believe insurance superstore where her sales skills help all the customers decide to buy policies from Progressive.
Media Decoder

BP Twitter Parody Ruffles BP's Feathers
The operator of a Twitter feed that exists to mock BP and its response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was asked by the oil company this week to specify that the feed was just a fake. Naturally, the anonymous operator had some more fun at BP’s expense while making the adjustment. The Twitter feed, which is followed by almost 150,000 people, formerly claimed that it seeks to “get BP’s message and mission statement out into the twitterverse!” Now the feed describes itself thusly: “We are not associated with Beyond Petroleum, the company that has been destroying the Gulf of Mexico for 51 days.” Twitter contacted the operator on Tuesday about specifying that the feed, called BPGlobalPR, isn’t actually a product of BP’s public relations staff. “BP requested that the account holder be asked to comply with Twitter’s guidelines regarding parody,” Twitter said in a statement Wednesday. “Twitter subsequently provided suggestions of best practices that are found on our parody policy page.” The dust-up about BP’s request only generated more attention for the fake feed. Among its more recent entries: “Surprised ourselves by getting emotional on the coast today. Turns out the wind blew dispersant in our eyes.” Update: The anonymous operator of the fake Twitter feed tells my colleague Noam Cohen, “The changes we have made are the only changes we will make. If there is a problem, they will have to shut us down.”
Media Decoder

BPGlobalPR Tweets

We respect your outrage, we just don't believe it's sustainable.

Investing a lot of time & money into cleaning up our image, but the beaches are next on the to-do list for sure.

Obama wants us to start a liability account to pay spill victims. We'd rather not, but thanks for asking!

If the public is willing to call tar balls "fancy BP pearls", we are willing to admit that they exist.

We are not killing animals in the gulf, we are creating fossils in the gulf. Have a little perspective.

Just to be clear, we're not just blaming Britain, we're also blaming photographers, reporters and fishermen.

Prank the nerds at the NRDC! Send a note to your senator saying BP Rules, Gulf of Mexico drools!

Seems like everyone has agreed to hate us. What if we bring up Gay Marriage? Abortion? Come on, argue people!

We're on a seafood diet- When we see food, we eat it! Unless that food is seafood from the Gulf. Yuck to that.

Millions of people live in the gulf. If each one donated just a few thousand dollars, we'd have enough $ to fix this mess.

I hate birds. ^Tony

Did some jerk show you a photo of an oily animal and ruin your day? Just imagine it's pudding & forget! All better!

$75 million is a lot of money if you're poor. For us, it's a couple mediocre sandwiches and a round of Arnold Palmers.

New estimates place oil leak at 40,000 barrels a day, but keep in mind that OH MY GOD WHAT'S THAT BEHIND YOU?!

DO NOT ask your reps to support Clean Energy. Buying their votes back will take a lot of money away from the cleanup effort.

A $75 million liability cap is too high! That only leaves us w/ $5.525 billion in 1st quarter profits! Step up taxpayers.

Yes, our "spill" is a "trickle" and "hurricanes" are "drizzles". Hope it doesn't "drizzle" on our "trickle". That'd be a "pickle".

Wait, Oil PLUMES? We thought you asked about oil PLUMS in the ocean. How silly! Yes, yes, there are TONS of oil plumes!

Surprised ourselves by getting emotional on the coast today. Turns out the wind blew dispersant in our eyes.

Celebrating 50 days of the spill w/ hotel conference room, catered lunch, funny speeches and a lot of back patting.

Money can't buy happiness. But Tony Hayward did buy a giant yacht he calls 'Happiness'. It has a frickin' helicopter pad on it!

We're having an internal debate at the office. Is the Gulf of Mexico one of the Great Lakes?

We take this situation very seriously, which is why tonight's oil wrestling event will be followed by a candle light vigil.

Safety is our primary concern. Well, profits, then safety. Oh, no- profits, image, then safety, but still- it's right up there.

Words can not express how sorry we are. So we are going to stop apologizing and just give our investors 10 billion dollars.

We don't forbid our workers from wearing respirators because it looks bad in photos. We just want to see their smiling faces!

You don't go drilling 5000 feet underwater with the tools you want, you do it with the tools you have. Very basic tool logic.

If we're being accused of being criminals, we want to be tried by a jury of our peers- wealthy execs who don't give a damn.

We are very upset that Operation: Top Kill has failed. We are running out of cool names for these things.

http://twitter.com/bpglobalpr

-------------------------------
The Marketing Ideanet is a free idea sharing newsletter published by 602 Communications. We are a TV training and consulting company that specializes in improving front-line news and marketing skills. Check out thousands of cutting edge examples at our web site. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

Sent via TVSpy's email servers. Visit TV Spy's Marketing Matters.

Graeme Newell
602 Communications
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(919) 217-4438
Web Site
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Graeme Newell's Marketing Ideanet 6/3/2010

The Marketing Ideanet is a free idea sharing newsletter published by 602 Communications. We are a TV training and consulting company that specializes in improving front-line news and marketing skills. Check out thousands of cutting edge examples at our web site. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

Sent via TVSpy's email servers. Visit TV Spy's Marketing Matters.

Graeme Newell
602 Communications
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
(919) 217-4438
Web Site
Facebook
Twitter

In This Issue
Promo of the Day
AP Stylebook Includes Social Media Guidelines Section
FCC Urged to Monitor Cable, Radio Hate Speech
Palin Slams NBC as Untrustworthy
Olbermann Names Campbell Brown in 'Worst Person' List
James Cameron Brainstorms on Oil Spill
Unchallenged, TBS Owns Diversity Market
Did 'Law & Order' Make New York Safer?
Religious Groups Protest Jesus Cartoon Project
Saudi Youths Face Harsh Ruling for MTV Reality Exposure
'Indecent' Women Presenters Harassed at Al-Jazeera
Local Stations Increasingly Using Product Placement
Survey Lists New England's Most Powerful Brands
McDonald's Debuts Gay Advertising Campaign
Judge Rules for Don Henley in Ad Flap
The Most Interesting Man in the World Quotes

Quotes

“Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism as it is to dramatic art, for the object of journalism is to make events go as far as possible”
- Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher (1788-1860)

"Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise."
- Eric Hoffer

“Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight.”
- Milan Kundera, Czech Novelist, Playwright and Poet

Promo of the Day
Exaggeration as a creative vehicle: A product attribute or feature becomes so intense that it causes unexpected consequences. Often, extravagant and funny measures must be taken to keep things from getting out of hand.

602communications.com/VideoExamples

Share your creative work with your promo peers on the 602communications.com site. Just email it to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Flash (.flv) or QuickTime (.mov) files, size 320 x 240, are preferred, but WindowsMedia (.wmv) files will also be accepted. Large files may be sent via http://www.yousendit.com. You can also mail your clip a DVD to Graeme Newell at 1011 Lyndhurst Falls Lane, Knightdale, NC 27545.

AP Stylebook Includes Social Media Guidelines Section
The Associated Press has unveiled 42 new style guidelines for social media in the 2010 edition of its Stylebook, most notably re-classifying "website" as one word (it had previously suggested "Web site"). For the first time, the Stylebook contains a Social Media Guidelines section focused on setting journalism standards for social-media-specific language and sourcing verification. The 42 new entries refer mostly to networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter, standardizing terms such as app, blogs, click-throughs, friend and unfriend, metadata, RSS, search engine optimization, smart phone, trending, widget and wiki, according to the Associated Press. The changes to the AP Stylebook — such as the change from "Web site" to "website" — reflect suggestions from the Stylebook's staff, readers, and users, as well as increased attention to common usage in both print and online sources. "It was clear that 'website' has become the widely accepted usage," said Darrell Christian, AP editor-at-large. Also new to the 2010 Stylebook are entries standardizing the use of terms such as Alcoholics Anonymous, thumbs-up, and Ultimate Fighting.
Huffington Post

FCC Urged to Monitor Cable, Radio Hate Speech
The Federal Communications Commission is being urged to monitor "hate speech" on talk radio and cable broadcast networks. A coalition of more than 30 organizations argue in a letter to the FCC that the Internet has made it harder for the public to separate the facts from bigotry masquerading as news. The groups also charge that syndicated radio and cable television programs "masquerading as news" use hate as a profit model. "As traditional media have become less diverse and less competitive, they have also grown less responsible and less responsive to the communities that they are supposed to serve," the organizations wrote to the FCC. "In this same atmosphere hate speech thrives, as hate has developed as a profit-model for syndicated radio and cable television program masquerading as 'news.'" The organizations, which include Free Press, the Center for Media Justice, the Benton Foundation and Media Alliance, also argue that the anonymity of the Web gives ammunition to those that would spread hate. The groups did not mention any specific programming on the right or the left in their letter, which supports a petition filed by the National Hispanic Media Coalition last year requesting a probe of the relationship between hate speech and hate crimes. The groups argue the Internet has made it harder for the public to separate the facts from bigotry masquerading as news. "The Internet gives the illusion that news sources have increased, but in fact there are fewer journalists employed now than ever before. Moreover, on the Internet, speakers can hide in the cloak of anonymity, emboldened to say things that they may not say in the public eye." "For these reasons, as the Commission deliberates how the public interest will be served in the digital age, it should consider the extent of hate speech in media, and its effects."
The Hill

Palin Slams NBC as Untrustworthy
Sarah Palin is taking aim at NBC over the network's interview Tuesday with Joe McGinniss, the journalist who is writing a book about the former Alaska governor and currently renting the home next door to her. Calling NBC's actions the "most recent illustration of the untrustworthiness of America's mainstream media," Palin criticizes the network on her Facebook page for not including statements she and her husband, Todd, had provided ahead of the segment. "We were glad to provide a statement and appreciated NBC's promise to run it," Palin wrote in the post Tuesday. "Todd and I both crafted the statement very carefully because our new neighbor has taken to accusing us of 'inciting hatred' – a charge which we obviously take very seriously … But there was just one problem: NBC broke their promise and didn't run our statements after all." McGinniss, who previously authored a largely-critical portrayal of Palin for the now-defunct Portfolio Magazine, moved into the Wasilla home last month, prompting the Palins to build a 14-foot fence separating the two properties. In the nine-minute "Today Show" segment, McGinniss defended his decision to rent the home next door, saying it had more to do with the property's low rent than its proximity to the subject of his upcoming book. "The fact is I would be living in this house if the Palin's lived on the moon. Fifteen hundred bucks a month for a house in Wasilla. I need to be in Wasilla to do my work," he told NBC's Matt Lauer. "I am not observing them at all. I am here to talk to people who have known them for 40 years in Wasilla." McGinniss also took aim at Palin for recently posting a photograph of him on her Facebook page and suggesting he was spying on her family. "Sarah hysterically puts up this Facebook page with all sort of ugly innuendo, which frankly is revolting the things she has caused people to say about me," he said. "I think this is probably a lesson for the American people of the power Sarah has to incite hatred and her willingness and readiness to do it." McGinnis went on to compare Palin's tactics to those of the "Nazi troopers used in the 1930's." In the statement, Palin claims NBC chose not run, the former vice presidential nominee says McGinniss "certainly has a right to live wherever he wants, but my family also has a right to expect privacy, and hopefully to enjoy peace this summer … the media sensationalizes the recent McGinniss' tactic so the public will tune in to whatever the latest episode is, always with ratings in mind, and that's unfortunate." Palin also said that NBC provided "a lame excuse" for not airing her statement and promised to do so Wednesday. A spokeswoman for the Today Show told CNN, "We were unable to run [the statements] this morning due to a timing issue."
Political Ticker

Olbermann Names Campbell Brown in 'Worst Person' List
Keith Olbermann set his sights on former colleague Campbell Brown Tuesday when he listed her as a runner-up in his daily "Worst Person In The World" segment. Olbermann slammed the departing CNN host for telling The Los Angeles Times that creating a show with "an unbiased perspective" was more difficult to do than creating a show that's part of "the echo chamber." The Times never quoted Brown as calling out Olbermann specifically, but it filled in the blanks. Despite saying that he "liked" Brown, Olbermann didn't hold back. He called her a "lame duck" host and characterized her recent round of interviews as the "I-Am-A-Martyr-To-Real-News tour": Olbermann: "I've done the two kinds of news hours that she references by implication, one where you just read what's handed to you and you pretend that both sides -- correct and wrong -- merit equal consideration and you believe that you, and you alone in the world, are objective. .... And I've done the news hour where you stick your neck out and tell the echo chamber it's wrong, and you try to get people thinking, and you get death threats in the mail, and dirty looks in the hallway. And trust me, of those two kinds, trying to present an 'unbiased perspective' isn't just easier, it's as easy as rereading the Associated press wire copy.... CNN's 8 o'clock news programs haven't failed because they're competing with opinion and interpretative news programs. They've failed because CNN hasn't figured out that everything it puts on the air is available to everybody who watches all day on the internet and if you don't bring something else to the table, they aren't going to watch!" CNN has responded to Olbermann's segment through a spokesperson: "By the end of the day some people may know what's happened in the world - but that's no thanks to MSNBC, which didn't even bother to cover the press conference announcing that Top Kill had failed to stop the Gulf oil spill. As a news organization, CNN provides viewers both content and context to the days' news, unlike the partisan networks."
Huffington Post

James Cameron Brainstorms on Oil Spill
"Titanic" director and deep sea explorer James Cameron took part in a brainstorming session with scientists, academics and Washington officials Tuesday on how to contain the 6-week-old oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, environmental sources said. Cameron made two documentaries about the wreck of the ocean liner Titanic as well as the blockbuster 1997 Hollywood movie using a small fleet of specially designed remotely operated underwater vehicles. U.S. agency officials said Tuesday's meeting was "part of the federal government's ongoing efforts to hear from stakeholders, scientists and experts from academia, government and the private sector as we continue to respond to the BP oil spill." It followed the failure last week of British Petroleum's "top kill" effort to plug the leak by pumping heavy mud into the fractured oil well. The gathering on Tuesday, one of many such meetings in the past few weeks, involved officials from the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy and other federal agencies, Washington officials said. The meeting, which included more than 20 top scientists, engineers and technical experts, was described as a "listening session as these stakeholders shared ideas about possible efforts to mitigate the BP spill's impact on the Gulf region." Details of Cameron's contribution were not immediately available. He studied physics at college and helped develop deep sea submersible equipment and other underwater ocean technology for the making of series of documentaries exploring the wrecks of the Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck some two miles below the surface.
Hollywood Reporter

Unchallenged, TBS Owns Diversity Market
IN 2004 the cable station TBS, based in Atlanta, rebranded itself with a bold slogan: “very funny.” What it had to back up the tag line, at the time, were reruns of “Seinfeld” and “Friends” — shows that had already proven their hilarity on NBC. Six years later the humor is more homegrown, and decidedly diverse. The most prominent new show is “Are We There Yet?,” a family sitcom based on the movie comedies starring Ice Cube. Starting this week, that show will be sandwiched on Wednesday nights between Tyler Perry’s two sitcoms, “Tyler Perry’s House of Payne” and “Meet the Browns,” while George Lopez’s talk show, “Lopez Tonight,” runs four nights a week. In a television world where “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and “The Cosby Show” are distant memories, TBS has quickly become the home of minority-driven comedy. Actors of varying ethnicities can be found on the broadcast networks and the biggest of the cable channels, often playing characters in ensemble dramas like “Grey’s Anatomy,” although some (like “CSI,” which stars Laurence Fishburne) cast nonwhite actors in leading roles. But in comedy, diversity seems to hit a wall, especially since the demise of UPN, which broadcast shows like “Everybody Hates Chris” and “Moesha.” The recent Fox sitcom “Brothers” was quickly pulled from the schedule after disappointing ratings. Now TBS’s new block of minority-oriented programming sits virtually unopposed. “That’s where TBS is really smart,” said Vic Bulluck, the executive director for the N.A.A.C.P.’s Hollywood bureau. “There are no African-American comedies on any of the major networks. ‘The Cleveland Show’ on Fox is the closest thing we’ve got, and that’s highly rated. So if an animated African-American family can find an audience on network television, why wouldn’t a real African-American family?” (It should be noted that the creators and star of “The Cleveland Show” are white.) Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks, said he wasn’t sure why broadcast networks weren’t giving TBS’s diverse programming more competition. “I imagine that would be a very uncomfortable question for networks to answer,” Mr. Koonin said. “There’s a huge audience out there that wants to see people on television that look and live their lives like they do. We’re happy to accommodate them.” It’s the dearth of diversity that concerns the N.A.A.C.P.’s Mr. Bulluck most. “TBS is cornering the market, and I don’t mean to not applaud them,” he said. “But it’s disconcerting that we don’t have one show like theirs on the broadcast networks. Sitcoms gave us Will Smith and Queen Latifah. They anoint tomorrow’s stars. My concern is that we’ll wake up in 15 years and still have the same problem.”
NY Times

Did 'Law & Order' Make New York Safer?
Dick Wolf, the creator of “Law & Order,” earned hundreds of millions of dollars for NBC and a handful of awards, including an Emmy for best drama, and brought thousands of jobs to New York during the show’s 20-year run, which finally ended last week. And he may have done something else: help bring tourists back to New York City. More than other writers and filmmakers associated with the city during that time — Tom Wolfe, Richard Price, Martin Scorsese — Mr. Wolf created the popular narrative of an era in which crime dropped at an unprecedented rate. If Edith Wharton is identified with the Gilded Age, Mr. Wolf is the chief chronicler of the Reclamation Age, when New York became safe again. The Big Apple was “rotting,” a Time magazine cover declared; an editorial in The New York Times that year spoke of “a New Beirut.” Even Pete Hamill, that hardy city champion, wrote simply, “New York is dying.” But while the scenarios on “Law & Order” seemed frighteningly familiar — Mr. Wolf often said his script bible was the front page of The New York Post — something very different was happening beneath the surface. The show bypassed the kitchen-sink realism of “Hill Street Blues” and the operatic fatalism of “Homicide: Life on the Street.” Its detectives, Logan, Briscoe and the rest, didn’t beat up suspects, take bribes or jump into bed with victims. Instead they interviewed suspects, read them their rights (mostly), waited for ballistic reports and checked their math. They were model 1990s cops — cool, professional and interchangeable — and as far from the tragic, tortured cops of “NYPD Blue” as Sherlock Holmes is from an English bobby. “It was optimistic about the people in the criminal justice system,” Mr. Zuckerman said. “They were people with ability and people of good conscience dedicated to protecting New York.” And as they pulled on the threads of the case, a pattern and motive always emerged. Unlike in the real New York, there is almost no pure street crime in “Law & Order.” In a show obsessed with the city’s class structure, you were far more likely to be murdered by your financial adviser than by a drug dealer. Crime has no single cause, the show seemed to argue, but crimes do, and they can be solved one at a time. Mr. Wolf portrayed a city in which there were no senseless crimes, only crimes that hadn’t yet been made sense of. He took the conventions of the English country murder mystery and tucked them inside the ungovernable city. In so doing, for a national audience, he de-randomized New York violence. “By the end of the hour,” Mr. Karmen said, “they gave a false impression in the sense that crime doesn’t pay, and that the long arm of the law catches up with you.”
NY Times

Religious Groups Protest Jesus Cartoon Project
It's not on the air yet. It's not shot yet. There's no pilot yet. Hell, there might not even be a script yet. But Comedy Central developing an animated project about Jesus Christ has the biggest names in the TV watchdog business forming a Super Best Friends protest super-group to preemptively smite the show. Brent Bozell (president, Media Research Center), Tony Perkins (president, Family Research Council), Michael Medved (talk radio host), Bill Donohue (president, Catholic League), Rabbi Daniel Lapin (American Alliance of Jews and Christians) and, of course, Tim Winter (president, Parents Television Council) are joining forces to form the Citizens Against Religious Bigotry. That's right -- CARB. (If only it wasn't the Coalition of the Religious Against Bigotry because then it could be "CRAB"). Comedy Central's "JC" is currently in development, which means it's still a couple steps away from becoming a Go project. The show is about Jesus trying to live as a regular guy in New York City and wanting to escape the shadow of his "powerful but apathetic father". With Comedy Central having recently censored frequent parenting group target "South Park" for trying to portray the Prophet Muhammad, some Christian leaders see the development of a Jesus cartoon as exhibiting an offensive double standard. “After we reveal the vile and offensive nature of Comedy Central’s previous characterizations of Jesus Christ and God the Father, we expect these advertisers to agree wholeheartedly to end their advertising on Comedy Central and discontinue their support for unabashed, anti-Christian discrimination," Bozell said in a statement. "Why should they be supporting a business that makes a habit of attacking Christianity and yet has a formal policy to censor anything considered offensive to followers of Islam? This double standard is pure bigotry, one from which advertisers should quickly shy away.” Comedy Central had no comment.
THR Live Feed

Saudi Youths Face Harsh Ruling for MTV Reality Exposure
Saudi Arabia's religious police are trying to bring to court three Saudi youths for challenging the kingdom's austere lifestyle on an MTV reality show -- a new test of the country's stated commitment to reform. Divisions have emerged within the influential religious establishment, including the religious police body itself, over long-held restrictions that have been enforced in the world's leading oil producing country and key U.S. ally. An official at the Jeddah court confirmed the filing of the lawsuit for the crime of "openly declaring sin" and said it would take at least one week for the Islamic sharia court to decide whether to proceed with a trial or dismiss the case. The Saudi judiciary system, based on an austere reading of Islamic sharia law, reserves harsh punishments for such offenses that could involve lashes with whip and years of imprisonment. Aired last month, MTV's "True Life - Resist the Power, Saudi Arabia" followed how three Saudi youths and a heavy metal band cope with the strictures they encounter in their daily life in Jeddah, seen as the kingdom's most liberal city (here). The kingdom is ruled by the Al Saud family in alliance with clerics from the austere Wahhabi school of Islam who oversee mosques, the judiciary and education, as well as run their own coercive apparatus, the religious police. Interior ministry police and the religious police work together to make sure unrelated men and women are kept apart, women are covered from head to toe and that sharia law is implemented, including a ban on alcohol. "We are not free to live as we like," said Aziz, one of the youths who appeared on the MTV show. The episode showed how he tries to meet his girlfriend for a date, a risky endeavor in the kingdom. "I feel great solace when I talk to her." Fatima, a young Saudi woman, seeks to start a business selling the traditional abaya cloak that women must wear in Saudi Arabia, but in colors other than the standard black. The show also followed the struggle of a heavy metal band to find venues to play. They explain that when they pray they turn their heavy metal T-shirts inside out to show respect for God. It is the second time in a year that Saudis got into hot water for appearing on foreign television. Mazen Abdul-Jawad was sentenced last year to five years in jail, 1,000 lashes and a five-year travel ban after he bragged about his sexual exploits on a TV show aired by Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC).
Rueters

'Indecent' Women Presenters Harassed at Al-Jazeera
Five women presenters have resigned from the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera after being accused of not dressing modestly enough. In a row which has split the channel, the five complained about harassment from a senior editor, whom they accused of making "offensive remarks" about their appearance. After the channel refused to back them, the five women, some of the best-known faces in the Middle East thanks to the channel's popularity, quit. Three others have registered protests while staying with the station. An internal inquiry has since cleared the official, the deputy editor-in-chief Ayman Jaballah, and asserted that the channel had the right to dictate how its presenters appeared. The women concerned in the latest clash are Jumana Nammour, Lina Zahr al Deen Jullinar Mousa, Luna al-Shibl and Nawfar Afli, the first three from Lebanon, the other two from Syria and Tunisia respectively. All are relatively liberal societies, and the five appeared with their hair uncovered, in contrast to some of Al-Jazeera's other women presenters, as well as heavily made up. According to sources within the channel, there had been an escalating conflict between the two sides, with Mr Jaballah in particular making repeated comments about the women's "clothes and decency". The issue is likely to refocus attention on the difficulties Al-Jazeera faces in trying to reconcile its mission to be the BBC of the Middle East with the conservatism of some of the societies in which it broadcasts.
The Telegraph

Local Stations Increasingly Using Product Placement
Stations, battered by the recent recession, are increasingly confronted by the lure of product placement lucre, and the effect it may have on viewer trust. Branded integrations have long been a staple of network entertainment programming, now they are becoming increasingly common in local TV, whether it's Pepsi containers on WIAT Birmingham's Wake Up Alabama, Verizon FiOS branding on WNBC New York's sports reports, or KFOR Oklahoma City branding its helicopter with the name of a local auto dealer. The LIN group has even built a stable of product placement-driven morning shows, including WNAC Providence's The Rhode Show and WISH Indianapolis' Indy Style. Paid plugs may have been discouraged in the past, today, more and more managers, pushed harder to maintain profit margins on a slashed budget, are coming around to the concept. "The pressure to perform is so great that you've got no choice but to take a hard look at it," says WIAT President/General Manager Bill Ballard, who adds that he would not allow placements in a "hard" evening or late newscast.
MediaPost

Survey Lists New England's Most Powerful Brands
Give Protobrand, a Boston-based branding company, credit for trying to break down marketing barriers in the provinces: The company surveyed 350 top marketing execs everywhere but New England, asking them to name the area's 25 most powerful brands. ESPN was named the most powerful, followed by General Electric and Dunkin' Donuts. Subway, Ben & Jerry's, L.L. Bean, Bose, Samuel Adams, Ocean Spray and Staples rounded out the top 10. Why step outside New England for opinions about how companies within Red Sox Nation are doing? "Protobrand is a branding company that focuses on New England businesses," a spokeswoman for the company tells Marketing Daily. "And there are already plenty of rankings of the most powerful national brands." In order to be considered as a potential New England powerhouse, Protobrand says it only considered companies based in New England, that have marketing direction within New England, and have a national footprint. It also required that the company earn at least some portion of revenue from consumer markets, which ruled out such large companies as State Street and Boston Scientific. Protobrand also asked the marketing executives it surveyed to name the New England brands they most admired. Shoe marketer New Balance came in first, followed by Bose, Ben & Jerry's, ESPN and L.L. Bean. "Brand Momentum" was also a category, and in that list, Dunkin' Donuts dominated, followed by CVS/Pharmacy, Samuel Adams, Subway and ESPN.
MediaPost

McDonald's Debuts Gay Advertising Campaign
Fast food giant McDonald's have made their first ever gay-specific ad campaign, which has premiered in France. The commercial, entitled Come As You Are, shows a gay youngster in a McDonald's restaurant with his father - who is unaware of his son's sexuality. Naturally, the advert has sparked varied reactions across social networking and micro-blogging sites. The world's largest chain of quick service restaurants, McDonald's serve tens of millions of customers daily worldwide. They have 1,200 restaurants in the UK alone. View ad at link:
Pink Paper

Judge Rules for Don Henley in Ad Flap
A federal judge has tentatively ruled that California senatorial candidate Chuck DeVore violated rocker Don Henley's copyrights on two songs when he used them as the basis for campaign commercials posted on YouTube. In addition, the judge said that DeVore's infringement was likely willful. Over the past few months, several musicians have pressed copyright claims against politicians including John McCain, Charlie Crist, and Joe Walsh. The case against DeVore was the first to get to judgment. In response to the lawsuit by Henley, DeVore claimed that the First Amendment protected political speech and he had a fair use right to Henley's work. In court papers, DeVore claimed that in using two of Henley's songs -- and rewriting the lyrics -- he was parodying Hollywood's affection for liberals. Using a copyrighted song as part of a parody (poking fun at the original work) is allowed more often than using a copyright in a satire (when you're poking fun at something else). U.S. District Court Judge James Selna framed the major legal conundrum this way: "This case raises the somewhat novel issue of whether...criticism of the author of an original work falls on either the parody or satire side of the line. In other words, is work which appropriates from the original to criticize the original's author -- but does not directly criticize the content of original -- validly classified as 'parody'?" Judge Selna noted, "The act of ridiculing and lampooning public figures is a rich part of our First Amendment tradition" and "in many cases, the most effective tool of ridiculing a public figure...is through that person's own creations." On the other hand, Selna takes great pains to analyze the character and lyrics of each of DeVore's songs to determine whether he took too much liberty in what he borrowed from Henley's underlying composition. He found that the song "All She Wants to Do Is Tax" (based on Henley's "All She Wants to Do Is Dance") is pure satire because it fails to take aim at the original or its author, and thus it lacks justification to borrow. He found that "After the Hope of November Is Gone" (based on Henley's "The Boys of Summer") lampoons Henley as an Obama supporter and would thus be justified in appropriating some of Henley's song. However, the judge finds the song goes far beyond what's necessary to hold the singer up to ridicule. Neither song is fair use, the judge rules.
AdWeek

The Most Interesting Man in the World Quotes

Police often question him, just because they find him interesting.

His beard alone has experienced more than a lesser man's body.

His blood smells like cologne.

He has amassed an amazingly large DVD collection, and has never once alphabetized it.

If he were to mail a letter without postage, it would still get there.

The pheromones he secretes effect people miles away… in a slight, but measurable way.

He once punched a magician. That’s right, you heard me.

His hands feel like rich, brown suede.

He lived in the hills of the Serengeti for a summer after being gifted a wife by a local tribes men.

He owns 4 sports cars, and rents 5.

He taught a horse to read his email for him.

He almost broke the land speed record in 1977, popular opinion among his team was that is beard caused to much wind resistance. He would have shaved it… No, no he wouldn’t have.

He was the featured man at a bachelorette auction he brought in over 13 million euro, under the table.

His personality is so magnetic, he is unable to carry credit cards.

Even his enemy’s list him as there emergency contact.

He never says anything taste like chicken… Not even chicken.

He speaks fluent French, in Russian.

His charm is so contagious, vaccines were created for it.

Years ago, he created a city out of blocks. Today over 600,000 people live and work there.

He is the only person to ever ace a Rorschach Test.

Every time he goes for a swim, dolphins appear.

Alien abductors have asked him to probe them.

If he we’re to give you directions… You would never get lost. And you’d arrive at least 5 minutes early.

His legend precedes him, the way lightning precedes thunder.

His reputation is expanding, faster then the universe.

He once had an awkward moment just to see how it feels.

He lives vicariously through himself.

He’s been known to cure narcolepsy just by walking into a room.

He’s a lover… Not a fighter, but he’s also a fighter, so don’t get any ideas.

His organ donation card, also lists his beard.

When it is raining, it is because he is sad.

Even his parents’ advice is insightful.

If there were an interesting gland, his would be larger than most men’s entire lower intestines.

His shirts never wrinkle.

He is left-handed. And right-handed.

He once knew a call was a wrong number, even though the person on the other end wouldn’t admit it.

You can see his charisma from space.

When he orders a salad, he gets the dressing right there on top of the salad, where it belongs…where there is no turning back.

If a monument was built in his honor, Mt. Rushmore would close, due to poor attendance.

On every continent in the world, there is a sandwich named after him.

He doesn’t believe in using oven mitts, nor potholders.

His cereal never gets soggy. It sits there, staying crispy, just for him.

His pillow talk is years ahead of it’s time.

Respected archaeologists fight over his discarded apple cores.

It is said the sun comes up later on the 6th of May, in case his Cinco parties run long.

The Mayans prophecized his birth.

Even lucha libres remove their masks in his presence.

He once taught a German Shepherd to bark in Spanish.

He serves sizzling fajita platters barehanded.

Bulls flat-out refuse to fight him.

He once buried a time capsule full of things that haven't happened yet.

He has been pronounced dead 7 times...make that 8.

His bear hugs are actually hugs he gives to bears.

He can't be bought, but his beard clippings have been know to show up on auction.

He has never lost a sock.

If he disagrees with you, it is because you are wrong.

Most songs about love are written for him, about him, or by him.

He'd never initiate a conversation about the weather, even in a typhoon.

He's against cruelty to animals, but isn't afraid to issue a stern warning.

Whatever side of the tracks he's currently on is the right side. If he crossed them, he would still be the right side.

He won the same lifetime achievement award twice.

Signs that say "This is not an exit" do not apply to him.

If he rides with you in your car, its resale value will instantly increase.

If he passed you on the street you would still feel stopped and said hello and asked you about your day.

He likes the word "fog".

If you were trapped with him in an elevator, you wouldn't want to be saved.

His business card just says, "I'll call you."

The Aztec calendar has his birthday chiseled in.

The front of his house looks like it was built by the Mayans...because it was.

His tacos refuse to fall from the shell.

If you were to see him walking Chihuahua, it would still look masculine.

Dicing onions doesn't make him cry...it only makes him stronger.

He has never filled up on chips.

http://www.themostinterestingmanintheworld.net/the-most-interesting-man-in-the-world-quotes-top-10/

http://therxforum.com/showthread.php?t=670734

http://symbii.com/stories.php?sid=618

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The Marketing Ideanet is a free idea sharing newsletter published by 602 Communications. We are a TV training and consulting company that specializes in improving front-line news and marketing skills. Check out thousands of cutting edge examples at our web site. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

Sent via TVSpy's email servers. Visit TV Spy's Marketing Matters.

Graeme Newell
602 Communications
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(919) 217-4438
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Graeme Newell's Marketing Ideanet 6/1/2010

The Marketing Ideanet is a free idea sharing newsletter published by 602 Communications. We are a TV training and consulting company that specializes in improving front-line news and marketing skills. Check out thousands of cutting edge examples at our web site. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

Sent via TVSpy's email servers. Visit TV Spy's Marketing Matters.

Graeme Newell
602 Communications
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
(919) 217-4438
Web Site
Facebook
Twitter

In This Issue
Use the Key Wall for Weather Teases and Promos
Online Buzz Doesn’t Equal Ratings, Stats Show
'Idol' Finale Hits Low Note
Reality Awards Favor Male Hosts
Turner Broadcasting Now in the 'Big Leagues' Says Levy
Larry King Too Old School for New Cablescape
Winfrey's Angel Network Dissolving
Skinbook: Facebook for Nudists
Apple Worth More Than Microsoft
Man Infects Himself with Computer Virus
The Curse of the Cell Phone Number
Anti-Smoking Warnings Counterintuitive, Study Claims
Space Trash Risky for TV Signals, Pentagon Says
Magic of Rembrandt's Painting Technique Revealed

Quotes

"The great difference between those who succeed and those who fail does not consist in the amount of work done by each but in the amount of intelligent work. Many of those who fail most ignominiously do enough to achieve grand success but they labor haphazardly at whatever they are assigned, building up with one hand to tear down with the other. They do not grasp circumstances and change them into opportunities. They have no faculty for turning honest defeats into telling victories. With ability enough and ample time, the major ingredients of success, they are forever throwing back and forth an empty shuttle and the real web of their life is never woven."
- Og Mandino

"If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results."
- Jack Dixon

"A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus."
- Thomas Carlyle

Use the Key Wall for Weather Teases and Promos
by Graeme Newell
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
http://www.602communications.com
Twitter: gnewell
Facebook: facebook.com/gnewell

Most stations have dropped some serious coin on weather hardware. Animated maps, satellite photos and graphics can create very impressive eye candy. New hardware can fly and zip viewers throughout the area like jet aircraft. Most stations make full use of these tantalizing components within the actual weather forecast, but leave them out of promos and teases. If you're lucky enough to own sophisticated weather animation hardware, make full use of it.

Most weather promos and teases feature weather talent talking heads. You may see eye-popping animated maps squashed down inside a monitor, far in the background. These wide shots don't show weather graphics at their best. As much as possible, take those beautiful weather graphics full. Shoot your teases and promos with talent at the key wall. Prime promos get the highest numbers on the station. Make sure this valuable audience gets a thorough taste of your dazzling weather graphics by showing these animations in your highest rated shows.

Remember to make these promo animations simple and bold. There won't be a lot of time to explain the forecast, so any map detail will probably be lost, and simply add to the clutter. If necessary, create custom animations just for the promos. More people will see your weather system here than in your newscast. With that many eyeballs watching in prime, it's worth the effort.

Graeme Newell is a broadcast and cable marketing consultant who specializes in relationship branding using core emotional drivers. He guarantees that his teasing seminar will immediately increase your news ratings or his workshop is free. Find out more here.

Online Buzz Doesn’t Equal Ratings, Stats Show
As might be expected for a series working toward its recent much-promoted finale, “Lost” below, generated the most engagement through social media of any show from February through April, according to Networked Insights, a social media analytics company. The statistic is the modern equivalent of water cooler conversation, and is measured by the number of online interactions posted and read about a given show. “American Idol” ranked second, and there was a steep drop-off in the social media index after that. Moreover, other shows with substantial online buzz did not have commensurate Nielsen ratings. Only four of the 10 shows in the social media ranking were also in the top 10 for ratings. Many popular shows on the social media index, like “The Simpsons,” were not even in the top 40 in Nielsen ratings. Producers of shows can use social media data as a large-scale focus group to see what most engages viewers. In addition, advertisers’ integration of brands into shows often reappears in social media conversations even as people increasingly skip TV commercials. “A passionate audience will talk about anything and everything that happens during the hour they’re watching — whether it’s a character or a commercial,” said Dan Neely, chief executive of Networked Insights.
NY Times

'Idol' Finale Hits Low Note
According to the New York Times' Arts Beat blog, "The night’s average of 24.2 million viewers [for Wednesday's 'American Idol' finale] is down about 18 percent from last year’s finale, when Kris Allen won the contest. The audience for the “Idol” finale peaked in 2006 when about 36 million people tuned in. (The finale for the first edition of “Idol,” which was shown in the summer of 2002 when ratings are typically lower, averaged 22.8 million viewers.)" Also, according to the article, "In the 18- to 49-year-old demographic, “Idol” delivered an 8.2 rating, according to the preliminary numbers, easily beating the other broadcast networks combined. For the season, Fox says that “Idol” is down nine percent among total viewers and 10 percent among 18- to 49-year-olds." According to the following chart, from TVbytheNumbers, this was the lowest rated 'Idol' finale in the 18-49-year-old demo. Here’s a historical look at Idol’s 18-49 rating and average viewers (millions) for the finales:

9/4/2002 American Idol 10.8 rating 23.02 million viewers
5/21/2003 American Idol 16.8, 38.06
5/26/2004 American Idol 12.0, 28.84
5/25/2005 American Idol 12.5, 30.27
5/24/2006 American Idol 14.2, 36.38
5/23/2007 American Idol 11.5, 30.76
5/21/2008 American Idol 11.4, 31.68
5/20/2009 American Idol 10.0, 28.86
5/26/2010 American Idol 8.2, 24.2

TV Week

Reality Awards Favor Male Hosts
Amid all the fierce competition and isolation of the "Top Chef" production, Padma Lakshmi finds herself mothering the contestants. "I read them their horoscope and tell them news from the outside world," says the host and judge of Bravo's Emmy-nominated cooking series. "If there's a bomb in Times Square, I tend not to tell them that. I have great compassion for them. They're away from their families and they never know what's coming at them." Lakshmi is part of a small sorority of female hosts on Emmy-nominated reality shows. Of the 12 nominees in the two years of the host award, she is one of only two women recognized (along with Heidi Klum of Bravo's "Project Runway"). No woman has won. This despite an increasing number of female hosts of major broadcast and cable hits. In casting NBC's "The Biggest Loser," "they wanted sensitivity," recalls Alison Sweeney, who got the host job. She believes female hosts can be more emotional and help audiences create a relationship with the contestants. "I always want to get more personal and I think that's because I'm a woman," says "Big Brother" (CBS) host Julie Chen, who interviews houseguests as they are eliminated. "I'm always looking to dig into the emotional stuff." "So You Think You Can Dance" (Fox) host Cat Deeley admits she becomes dangerously attached to the contestants. "I actually call them my babies," she says.
Hollywood Reporter

Turner Broadcasting Now in the 'Big Leagues' Says Levy
For more than four decades, the broadcast networks have set aside a week in May for staging splashy presentations in Manhattan to unveil their fall schedules for advertisers. The annual ritual kicks off television's ad sales season, known as the upfronts, when the networks sell more than two-thirds of their commercials for the coming season. Cable powerhouse Turner Broadcasting System two years ago crashed the party. The division of Time Warner Inc. decided to pitch its shows on TNT and TBS during the week reserved for major broadcast networks ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. Turner's message: It was now one of the big boys. It might have a point. In recent months, Turner Broadcasting landed comedian Conan O'Brien, who will bring his show to TBS in November, and struck a $10.8-billion deal to televise the NCAA basketball playoffs along with CBS for the next 14 years. Company Town met up with David Levy, president of Turner Broadcasting sales, distribution and sports, to discuss the advertising market and outlook for the TV business.

A year ago, the ad market was in the dumps. What's surprised you about the turnaround?
Certainly, there are signs that we are coming out of the recession, but there are challenges ahead. A year ago, advertisers weren't sure how strong their businesses were going to be, so they kept dollars back. Since then companies have reorganized, closed brands that were unsuccessful and come out of bankruptcy. They reset their targets and goals for sales. Now there is more clarity and visibility. Advertisers are getting back into the competitive race. This upfront you are going to see more volume. Demand is going to be strong.

How long will the broadcasters maintain their ad rate advantage over cable networks?
There is only one genre left, entertainment, where there still is a difference. There are no differences in [advertising rates] in sports, news or kids programming, which has become a cable business. As we add Conan O'Brien, George Lopez, the NCAA, shows like "Fallen Skies" and "Glory Daze" and other original programs to our lineup, we will continue to close that gap.

Would Turner like to get bigger in sports?
We carry the best of the best in sports programming: the NCAA tournament, Major League Baseball, NBA basketball, the PGA championships and NASCAR. When I look at properties to purchase for our company, it has to be good for our advertisers, good for our audience and good for our distributors, and fit our brand. We certainly would look at properties like the NFL. The key to all of this, though, if it doesn't fit our financial models, then we won't do it.

CNN has been struggling in the ratings after the stellar year with the presidential election in 2008. Has CNN become a harder sell?
You know, it hasn't. The brand is still very strong. CNN still has the largest total reach for viewership when you look at it across a full day, and when you look at it from the Internet and mobile perspective. CNN lives in a lot of different places. I'm not going to kid you, we are focused on bringing the ratings up on television as well. That's a priority here in this company.

What type of advertising integrations are you discussing with Conan O'Brien? Are we going to see Triumph, the cigar-chewing dog, sell Dove soap?
There is so much excitement from the advertisers around Conan O'Brien, an Emmy Award-winning comedian who reaches a target demographic that everyone wants. He owns his show, so he's going to have an incentive to be advertiser friendly. His whole organization wants this to be successful. You are going to see product integrations and possibly even live commercials with Conan.
LA Times

Larry King Too Old School for New Cablescape
Next week will be Mr. King’s 25th year on CNN, but these are hard days for the host, and not just because he is being beaten in ratings and bookings. Although still the linchpin of CNN’s lineup, he has come to embody an enormous problem facing the cable news channel. How can he and CNN compete in prime time when viewers seem to crave partisan political programs and when prominent guests — the lifeblood of Mr. King’s show — would rather burnish their images on other channels? So far, CNN cannot compete. “Larry King Live” is now struggling in the ratings, as is CNN as a whole. The ratings for the new “John King, USA” political show at 7 p.m. have been disappointing, and Campbell Brown announced last week that she was quitting her 8 p.m. show after concluding that her newscast could not compete with the bombastic opinion-oriented shows on Fox News and MSNBC. Ratings for Mr. King, 76, are about 20 percent better than those of his lead-in, Ms. Brown, but he ranks a distant third behind the conservative Sean Hannity on Fox and the liberal Ms. Maddow. His audience has been cut in half since the last presidential election, to an average of just 725,000 viewers a night. CNN executives will not say whether they will renew Mr. King’s contract when it ends next year. There is a growing feeling at the company that a succession plan should be put in place, but there is no evidence that CNN is actually preparing such a plan. “Larry King Live” is the last trace of an earlier age of cable TV, one that had little interest in the opinions of its hosts. “They have this iconic personality who is going to disappear in the not-too-distant future, and they don’t have any clue what they’re going to do,” one senior employee said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he did not have permission from the channel to speak publicly. Henry Schafer of the Q Scores Company, which measures public perception, said Mr. King showed below-average appeal, and given the age of the show, “it is very difficult at this point in time” to draw new viewers. Steven J. Farella, the chief executive of the advertising agency TargetCast TCM, said that CNN needed to attract younger viewers in prime time. In the advertising industry, he said, “after anybody mentions Larry King and CNN, the next words are ‘Yes, but it’s old,’ ” referring to the 60-plus audience for the program. “Larry King has a terrific place in cable news history,” Mr. Farella said, “but maybe not a firm place in cable news today.”
NY Times

Winfrey's Angel Network Dissolving
Oprah Winfrey's charity, The Angel Network, is shutting down as her talk show draws to a close. The network stopped accepting donations this week and said on its website that it plans to dissolve as soon as its remaining funds are disbursed. The Angel Network was launched in 1998 with donations from viewers of Winfrey's talk show; its demise stems from her decision to end her Chicago-based show in 2011, after 25 years on the air, Angel Network spokeswoman Angela DePaul said. The website notice said Winfrey and the network's directors are "extremely grateful" to the nearly 150,000 donors who gave more than $80 million to the charity. Its best-known projects included funding rebuilding efforts for Gulf Coast communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina and building 55 rural schools in 12 countries. The network website will continue and donors who still wish to contribute will be directed on that site to other charities, DePaul said. DePaul said donations hadn't dwindled but that it made sense to end the network as Winfrey sets her TV sights in a different direction. Winfrey isn't ending her philanthropic efforts. The website notice says her new cable network will highlight charitable organizations in coming years. Winfrey announced her round-the-clock Oprah Winfrey Network earlier this year. It is to start next January. She revealed last month that she'll host one of its programs, a nighttime travel and conversation show called "Oprah's Next Chapter."
Google News

Skinbook: Facebook for Nudists
The rules for Skinbook are clear: No pornographic images or headless torso shots. Don't leave sleazy comments under people's photos. Boot out any "creeps and voyeurs," as site executives call them, who manage to make it past the vetting process for new members. Skinbook.ning.com is a U.K.-based website that proudly touts itself as the Net's only genuine nudist social network. Skinbook capitalizes on users' familiarity with Facebook-style member profiles, messages, forums and groups. Except that, unlike on Facebook, everyone's naked. "For younger people, nudism is free from politics or activism. It's purely recreational," explains Skinbook's 25-year-old co-founder Karl Maddocks. "For younger nudists, it's just about going off to the beach and getting some beers out and just being yourself around like-minded people," says Maddocks, who by day is a (fully-clothed) student of politics and sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. "The idea of going to a walled-off nudist club or colony populated with single elderly guys in sandals and socks, to me that's just too cultish and weird." To be sure, nudists have been around since Adam and Eve, but the Internet has made finding like-minded clothes shunners that much simpler. Bona fide nudist sites abound, including ones like Figleafforum.com, which states that it is geared specifically for "Bible-believing Christian nudists and naturists." But what sets Skinbook apart is its social functionality that appeals to a younger demographic. Maddocks says the average age of Skinbook's roughly 9,000 members is between 35 and 40 years old (and falling), while the common ages of nudist clubs and associations usually hover north of 55 or 60. Skinbook also skews more female and more couples, while most nudist outlets are dominated by single men. "We try to keep up the quality of membership," says Maddocks. "We get about 200 sign-ups a day, but we only accept about 10% of applicants due to the poor or X-rated quality of most attempts to join." Skinbook began by accident in 2008 after Maddocks bumped into some of his fellow Manchester students on a clothing-optional beach in Wales. "We couldn't communicate on MySpace and Facebook about nudism since we were all kind of embarrassed. So we said, 'Let's start our own forum and call it Skinbook.' The rest is history." Much like the people you're likely to encounter on a nude beach, Skinbook members aren't all tanned, taut and toned. "I think it's a bit of a counterculture movement against the body-beautiful thing at the moment," Maddocks says of the renewed interest in nudism. "It's all well and good to look nice, but there's just too much pressure on everyone to be perfect. With guys, if you don't have a six-pack, then you're an ugly loser. For girls, if you don't have fake boobs and a nice butt, then you're a 'fat bitch.' It's pathetic. What we're saying is, Just enjoy being yourself."
Time

Apple Worth More Than Microsoft
It was the day a million iPads trumped a billion PCs. On Wednesday, Apple passed Microsoft to become the world's most valuable technology company based on market capitalization. While the two may end up trading positions for weeks and months to come, the unseating of the Redmond software giant captures the rise of consumer gadgets over workhorse corporate software. Microsoft continually has dismissed Apple for its single-digit percentage of the PC market. With the launch of the iPod, iPhone and iPad, however, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company has continually dazzled Wall Street traders with the new, new thing. Traders appear somewhat bored by Windows and Office, even if the software continues to rake in billions of dollars. As Roger Sterling said in the TV show "Mad Men" about ad accounts, "Old business is just old business." Microsoft stock fell 4 percent Wednesday to close at $25.01, which figures out to a market capitalization of $219.1 billion. Apple stock fell 0.5 percent to close at $244.11, giving the company a market capitalization of $222.1 billion. Market capitalization is the share price times outstanding shares, a common measure of how much the stock market values a company. "It's mostly symbolic," said Matt Rosoff, analyst at Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm in Kirkland. "Apple built a lot of new businesses; they've been able to be successful in those businesses. They also started from a smaller base." To compare the two company's financial performance, Microsoft had $14.6 billion in profit on $58.4 billion in sales in fiscal 2009. It says 1 billion people use Windows. Apple had a profit of $5.7 billion on $36.5 billion in sales in fiscal 2009. Microsoft is trading at a stock price 12.83 times earnings, also known as a price-to-earnings ratio. Apple's stock is trading at 24 times earnings. The wide gap is a sign of Wall Street's faith in Apple's future potential earnings and that its stock will continue to leap and bound.
Seattle Times

Man Infects Himself with Computer Virus
Get this: A British scientist has become the first person infected with a computer virus, which he inflicted upon himself, reports PC World. The article says "Dr. Mark Gasson, a cybernetics expert at the University of Reading, deliberately infected himself (by way of an RFID chip implanted in his wrist) with a benign computer virus....The device in Gasson's arm is a radio-frequency identification chip that emits a signal and allows him to access certain parts of the University of Reading laboratory." Gasson and his colleagues then infected his implanted chip with a computer virus. The article continues, "Gasson [then] went into the lab--and when the lab's computers read the code, the virus implanted itself into the database and began to replicate. Now if any of his other colleagues swipe their traditional swipe-cards to get into the lab, the virus can replicate itself on their swipe-cards. This experiment shows that viruses can be transferred wirelessly from implant devices to the computers they communicate with. Someone could thus potentially create a virus that would allow them to access secure areas (such as the University of Reading laboratory)." OK, Hollywood TV writers, let's see what you can do with this...
TV Week

The Curse of the Cell Phone Number
A mobile phone company has suspended the number 0888 888 888 – after every single person assigned to it died in the last 10 years. The first owner Vladimir Grashnov – the former CEO of Bulgarian mobile phone company Mobitel which issued the number – died of cancer in 2001 aged just 48. Despite a spotless business record there were persistent rumours that his cancer had been caused by a business rival using radioactive poisoning. The number then passed to Bulgarian mafia boss, Konstantin Dimitrov, who was gunned down in 2003 by a lone assassin in the Netherlands during a trip to inspect his £500 million drug smuggling empire. Dimitrov, who died aged 31, had the mobile with him when he was shot while eating out with a model. The phone number then passed to Konstantin Dishliev, a crooked businessman, who was gunned down outside an Indian restaurant in Bulgaria's capital Sofia after taking over the jinxed line. Dishliev, an estate agent, had secretly been running a massive cocaine trafficking operation before his assassination in 2005. He died after £130 million of the drug was intercepted by police on its way into the country from Colombia. Since then, the number is understood to have been dormant while police maintained an open file on Dishliev's killing and his smuggling ring. Now phone bosses are said to have suspended the number for good. Callers now get a recorded message saying the phone is "outside network coverage." A Mobitel spokesman would only say: "We have no comment to make. We won't discuss individual numbers."
The Telegraph

Anti-Smoking Warnings Counterintuitive, Study Claims
In a bound-to-be-controversial book released today, ad-industry pundit Martin Lindstrom busts commonly held beliefs about marketing, asserting that subliminal advertising does exist and maintaining that cigarette warning labels make smokers want to smoke more, not less. "Buyology: Truth and Lies About What We Buy," published by Doubleday, lays out the findings of a three-year, $7 million neuromarketing study by Mr. Lindstrom, who is chairman-CEO of Lindstrom Co. He and a team of researchers in Oxford, England, used the most up-to-date neurotechnologies -- functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) -- on 2,000 people from five countries in an effort to better understand consumer behavior. The goal was to gauge the efficacy of product health warnings, product placement and subliminal messaging, among other things. A major finding is that consumers are driven by not only conscious motivations, but subconscious ones, too. "The majority of the decisions we make every day are basically taking place in the part of the brain where we're not even aware of it," Mr. Lindstrom said. "I really wanted to find out what makes one brand appeal to us. You really can't ask that question to the conscious mind and depend on a verbal answer." But you can depend on the brain, he said, maintaining that's why neuromarketing, or the study of how the brain responds to marketing stimuli, is here to stay. Mr. Lindstrom said one of the most surprising findings of the study involved warning labels placed on cigarette packs. When project researchers asked test subjects if the warning labels worked, most said "yes." These were the subjects' conscious answers. But their subconscious answers told a different story. When researchers repeated the same question and flashed images of the labels while subjects underwent an fMRI, the images activated "craving spots" in the brain, indicating that the warnings made the smokers want to smoke more, not less. In a different study, researchers found that anti-smoking ads had the same counterintuitive effect. "Buyology" also says that a brand's logo is not as important as many have held it to be; that consumers' sense of sound and smell are more powerful than their sense of sight; and that product placement doesn't always work. For example, when Mr. Lindstrom's researchers analyzed product placements in "American Idol," they found that Coca-Cola was far more effective at captivating consumers than Ford Motor Co., even though the corporations similarly paid more than $26 million on their campaigns. The reason: The Coke label and colors were continually seen while Ford, which sponsored videos on the show, was less visible and less integrated into the action. Mr. Lindstrom anticipates that his book will be greeted with mixed reviews. He realizes that people are scared about using neuromarketing, but remains convinced that it can be used in an ethical way. "Neuromarketing is like a hammer," he said. "It depends on whose hand you use and how you use it. You can use it to destroy or hang up a beautiful painting on the wall." The Advertising Research Foundation declined to comment until it had time to review the book.
AdAge

Space Trash Risky for TV Signals, Pentagon Says
A Pentagon report is warning that space trash is putting at risk the $250 billion market for television signals, phone connections, global-positioning navigation and other signals, reports Bloomberg News. The services are at risk from potential crashes between satellites and debris, ranging from refuse from old rockets to abandoned satellites and which are making space "increasingly congested and contested," according to the report, which was sent to Congress in March and not publicly released. News of the report's findings comes after a rogue satellite earlier this month threatened to disrupt cable-television transmission for networks such as The Weather Channel and BBC America.
TV Week

Magic of Rembrandt's Painting Technique Revealed
Rembrandt's paintings have transfixed viewers for centuries, but now a new study reveals a scientific explanation for their calming beauty. By painting more detail in and around the eyes of his subjects, Rembrandt tapped into an innate human attraction to the face. This creates a more calming and immersive experience for the viewer.

Steve DiPaola of the University of British Columbia (UBC) suggests Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn may have pioneered a technique that guides the viewer's gaze around a portrait, creating a special narrative and "calmer" viewing experience. He and his colleagues detail their findings in the current issue of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's arts and sciences journal Leonardo.

Renaissance artists used various techniques to engage viewers, many incorporating new scientific knowledge on lighting, spatial layout and perspectives. To isolate and pinpoint factors that contribute to the "magic" of Rembrandt's portraits, DiPaola used computer-rendering programs to recreate four of the artist's most famous portraits from photographs of himself and other models. Replicating Rembrandt's techniques, DiPaola placed a sharper focus on specific areas of the model's face, such as the eyes.

Working with a team from the Vision Lab in UBC's Department of Psychology, DiPaola then tracked viewers' eye movements while they examined the original photographs and the Rembrandt-like portraits.

"When viewing the Rembrandt-like portraits, viewers fixated on the detailed eye faster and stayed there for longer periods of time, resulting in calmer eye movements," DiPaola said. "The transition from sharp to blurry edges, known as 'lost and found edges,' also directed the viewers' eyes around the portrait in a sort of narrative."

The study is the first to scientifically verify the impact of these "eye-guiding" techniques on viewers and to attribute its origin to Rembrandt.

The viewers also preferred portraits with this "eye-guiding narrative" to the original photographs with uniform details across the tableau.

"Whether he observed how his own eyes behaved while viewing a painting or if he did it by intuition, Rembrandt incorporated an understanding of how the human eye works that has since been proven accurate," DiPaola said.

LiveScience

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