Family hour is filled with inappropriate behavior; recent poll suggests

The PTC or more commonly known as the Parents Television Council states that there is 52% more sex and violence on television than in 2001. This looks like more awkward television shows with the parents, Right…

MTV, ESPN, CBS, and PBS all kinds of acronyms in the Daily Media Fix

MTV Nets Restructures Sales: McCarthy, Weinhouse Out

VIACOM’S MTV NETWORKS HAS RESTRUCTURED its sales operations so that Lisa McCarthy and her No. 2 heading MTVN Brand Solutions, the cross-platform sales unit for the company, are leaving. Their positions have been eliminated, and the unit formerly known as Viacom Plus is being dissolved. Its functions will be placed elsewhere within MTVN’s sales units. The remaining nine staffers in the group, which was re-branded from Viacom Plus in February during an overall MTVN sales reorganization, are expected to be reassigned elsewhere within MTVN.   Tough times not just for them but all of us in the media biz.

ESPN Won’t Offer Ratings Guarantees

THE SPORTS TV MARKETPLACE IS so hot that all sports shows, regardless of past performances, are getting the benefit of the draft. Some stronger sports programs aren’t even offering ratings guarantees. ESPN, for one, is pulling back on ratings guarantees, says one media buying executive–especially for college football. He says a memo he received from ESPN says any buys placed past Sept. 13 for college football games on ABC won’t include ratings guarantees. “The market is that strong,” says the media executive. ESPN representatives didn’t return email messages or phone calls by press time. Typically, a healthy market means high prices and scarce. This year, many TV sports properties–including ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” and NBC’s “Sunday Night Football”–are getting hefty increases, from 15% to as much as 25% hikes. But with that solid market position comes even tougher restrictions–such as pulling back on offering ratings guarantees. “Networks don’t like offering them,” says Doug Seay, veteran media executive and senior advertising sales executive for Eclipse Television, a producer of TV ski races. These guarantees could mean giving marketers more inventory, should the program fail to hit its target. Media buyers say other networks, such as NBC and Fox, are still offering them. “ESPN/ABC is usually the most aggressive to get rid of guarantees,” says one buyer. “It’s a sign of how the market is doing.” Earlier this year–during the upfront selling promise–ESPN was aggressive in deciding to hold the line on the type of guarantees it would be offering to marketers in the future. Because of the nature of its programming, live sporting events, the net told advertisers that unlike virtually all other cable and broadcast programmers, it would not be offering media deals with C3 options–commercial ratings plus three days of DVR playback. Instead, it would make media deals with the older live program rating guarantees.

CBS Raising ‘Cane’ Among ‘Rolling Stone’ Readers

CBS IS LAUNCHING A UNIQUE campaign to boost the profile of a new “steamy and seductive drama” that debuts Sept. 25. In the New York and L.A. editions of Rolling Stone, available on newsstands Friday, the company has included Peel ‘n Taste® flavor strips that deliver the (non-alcoholic) taste of a fictional Lucia Duque Rum mojito. The drama series, “Cane,” is set in South Florida, where a Cuban-American family headed by a character played by Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning Jimmy Smits runs the Lucia Duque rum and sugar business. First Flavor, which created the technology, calls the campaign the first “taste-drive” ad campaign. The flavor strip is wrapped in a thin, tamper-evident pouch and dissolves in the consumer’s mouth much like a breath strip. George Schweitzer, president of CBS Marketing, says his department has been on a “flavor sampling marathon over the summer. We’re always looking to find things that jump off the page and into readers’ minds and hearts … and now onto their tongues.” CBS discovered First Flavor through The Initiative, a New York media, marketing and digital agency that had read media reports about the company and placed the insert for CBS. The two-page advertisement promotes the season premiere of “Cane” while driving consumers to luciaduquerum.com, where they can enter a search for “The Duque Rum Girl,” who will be cast in an upcoming episode of “Cane.” The campaign, which Schweitzer describes as going from “fiction to fact and back again,” will be featured in “Cane” as part of the script. The family will be seen discussing how to market its Duque rum, members will talk about creating a search for the Duque Rum girl, and the ad itself–at least the first page of the two-page print ad–will make an appearance, as will the Web site. The chosen Duque Rum girl will be featured on the show. “The producers are into integrative marketing in a big way,” says Schweitzer, who adds that the first page of the print ad will look like a regular ad for a liquor brand. Bala Cynwyd, Penn.-based First Flavor plans to roll out similar launches over the next two months for “major food and beverage and oral care corporations,” says Barry Gesserman, vice president/sales and marketing and COO for First Flavor. Gesserman has 25 years of experience with Campbell Soup, Empire Kosher Poultry, Vlasic Foods and Stroh Brewery, and is a winner of Campbell’s “Top Gun” brand marketing award. President/CEO Jay Minkoff, a “serial entrepreneur,” says that First Flavor is working with a toothpaste brand to put shelf-edge dispensers in a supermarket chain next month. “They know that if people try the flavor, they tend to buy the product,” he says of the marketer behind that effort. “What we want to do is empower consumers through our product to be able to taste what a product is before they buy it,” says First Flavor’s Minkoff. The application is similar to product sampling, he admits, but much cheaper. He estimates that it costs 60 cents to $1 per person to sample a product–but only a tenth of that to put flavor strips in magazines, direct mail, at events or in stores. Currently, First Flavor is working with food and beverage companies on nutraceutical and vitamin- and mineral-enhanced products. These companies, he says, are using focus groups to test the strips. The CBS “Cane” promo is the first public implementation of First Flavor’s product, says Minkoff. “We didn’t mean for it to be a buzz generator for a fictitious product for a TV show although we love it to be used for this. We thought of it as a taste-marketing vehicle for actual products.” First Flavor was established by Adnan Aziz, founder and executive vice president, who came up with the idea of flavor strips in college while watching a scene from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” in which the characters get to taste flavored wallpaper.

Henson Company Produces ‘Big Idea’ For PBS

THE JIM HENSON COMPANY WILL partner with KCET, the PBS West Coast flagship station, to produce “What’s the Big Idea?,” a new educational TV series to debut on PBS Kids in 2008. The animated series will promote science readiness by encouraging kids’ curiosity about the world.

Reminder for Facebook users

Just a reminder for Facebook.com users that your profile can be searched by anybody starting today. This is why I feel that Facebook.com is slowly turning into a Myspace.com. You can edit your profile so that only people from your university can view it. I would recommend it if you haven’t done it yet.

How to unGoogle yourself

This is a decent guide to help you get yourself off the biggest search engine in the world.

Click This Link

Daily Media Fix; Kid Nation, WSJ*, Boomers

This is a new daily segment discussing the latest in Media news.

Kid Nation, the new CBS reality show isn’t very appealing to potential advertisers.

(Source Adage.com)

Half of CBS’s top 10 advertisers surveyed by Advertising Age said they are not in the controversial show that depicts kids ages 8 to 15 forming their own society in a western frontier village, although each cited reasons other than the hubbub as the reason.

My guess here is that it’s just too risky to be associated with a show like this. I mean CBS is making how much money on this show and look who the actors are (kids with no acting experience) seems like a risky move to me. Reminds me of another reality show that was on a few years ago about kids being sent out into the wilderness as a form of punishment and rehabilitation.

WSJ*, more like the Rupert Fox Sky News Journal

“unfair and unbalanced business perspectives with a slight right slant”

I’m wondering if this will continue to be as successful as it was in the past. It doesn’t take a statistician to see that the newspapers are suffering a serious decline in readership. I think it should be required for junior and high school students to have to read a newspaper everyday. Rather than sit online and watch youtube.com or play around on myspace.com or facebook.com. Just my opinion…

The over 50 Demo is back in the news and the big time players of media are too.

(source adage.com)

Seventy-five percent of U.S. wealth is in the hands of people aged 50-plus, boomers are the highest earners, there’s a grandchild born every 20 seconds.

Seems like a bit of a disparity there. Well get marketing and tap your niche. They might be old but they have more money than most of us.

AT&T* drops ad claim *fewest dropped calls, um yea we might have stretched the truth a little

Finally there is justice in the telecommunications industry. AT&T finally dropped their claim of fewest-dropped-calls…Right. I had AT&T for sometime before switching to Verizon five years ago. The ads that claimed that AT&T had the fewest dropped calls was so annoying because I knew many AT&T customers (friends & family) that had the dreaded wireless service and would always end up with dropped calls, on their end.

A while back I would always get irritated with their claim. I mean there is a truth-in advertising law right, no false claims while advertising. There is puffery and then there is all out lying to the consumer.   I like this new logo design.

They (AT&T) spent a huge chunk of their $1 billion dollar budget. Theories that they dropped the claim (source adage.com)

Could it have anything to do with unconfirmed reports that competitor Verizon Wireless pressured it to change following independent studies that showed the claim wasn’t exactly accurate? Or a Consumer Reports exposé that says the claim is inflated? Or talk that the survey it’s based on is far from foolfproof to begin with?

One thing is clear, however: One-upmanship claims by carriers who spend a collective $5 billion annually on marketing to brag about the best service or networks are disconnecting with consumers well aware wireless service has lots of room for improvement. “They’ve all got some nerve,” said Greg Daugherty, executive editor, Consumer Reports. “It’s a bit of a stretch.

Seems like AT&T is trying to save face before they are forced to stand up to their claim.

iTunes dumps NBC before contract expiration

Looks like Apple and the gang decided to fight fire with fire and dropped all of the NBC fall shows.

from MSNBC.com

“We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.”

Looks like #4 NBC may have shot themselves in the foot.

NBC wanted Apple to pay more than double its wholesale price for the material, which would have resulted in the retail price increasing to $4.99, Apple said.

$4.99 for an episode??? Tivo or DVR anyone. I am glad Apple dropped them. GREED…

Smirnoff US Green Tea Partay, JWT shows some serious talent with Boyz in the Hillz

This is an awesome parody video created by JWT. Compare this to the vintage commercial that JWT created.

Smirnoff Vintagesque commercial, clearly smirnoff campaign JWT

This is a creative spot produced by JWT for Smirnoff Vodka. This shows the enormous amount of creativity and depth of JWT.

iTunes & Fall launch of Hulu.com, the end of NBC on Apples iTunes

It is funny how everything is interconnected and information is slowly released and then the pieces all fit together. Shortly after reading about the fall launch of hulu.com I learned that Apple and NBC were parting ways after the contractual agreement ends in December of this year.

This is all cause and effect. NBC sees that there is more money to be made by going on their own and they break away from iTunes. For NBC it was a smart strategy, sign up with iTunes and slowly release more and more shows to iPod users. NBC tested the waters while reducing their initial risk and then once they saw the success of Itunes, youtube, and CBS online media portal, they jumped in with Hulu.com.

I think that you will see this trend continue on a greater scale as the cost of setting up these complex portals comes down and other networks see that they can create a more lucrative exclusive site. Steve Jobs no doubt anticipated the trend down the road, didn’t he?

It is interesting to see how the innovators start something amazing and then a few months later other companies come in and try to take a piece of the [apple] pie.