 | | | | Friday • June 13, 2008 | READ ALL NEWS AT ADAGE.COM | | Cable Upfront Market Halfway Done With Sales Expected to End by Next Week With 10%-15% Increase
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- With the envelope effectively sealed on this year's broadcast upfront, which wrapped early this week with a higher-than-expected final take of $9.2 billion, now it's off to the races for cable. The cable upfront, projected by several major analysts and media buyers to increase as much as 10% to 15% this year over 2007's take of $7.68 billion, will head into the weekend about 40% to 50% wrapped, according to several key media buyers and network executives.  FULL ARTICLE
| | TBS Gives Interruption a Whole New Meaning 'Bill Engvall' Promo Actually Freezes 'Family Guy'
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- To tout the coming season premiere of TBS's "The Bill Engvall Show," the network has been running a promo at the bottom of the screen during episodes of "Family Guy" that is impossible to miss. Mr. Engvall, with a remote control in hand, starts speaking over the dialogue being uttered by members of the animated comedy's Griffin clan. FULL ARTICLE | | Dance Over to the Circus with a Nanny and a Farmer Invasion of the Summer Reality Series RASH REPORT MINNEAPOLIS (AdAge.com) -- The big top came to the small screen last night, as NBC's "Celebrity Circus" became just the latest example of the networks working without a net as they try nearly every reality format to remain relevant during the summer. Indeed, the reality genre dominated, comprising 77% of prime-time programming. NBC, Fox and the CW ran all-reality slates; ABC ran two hours and CBS one. FULL ARTICLE | | Holding Funerals for Trees In Bangalore, Raising Awareness About Deforestation CMDGlobal Idea of the Week The Bangalore Environment Trust (BET) wanted to raise awareness about the recent "massacre" at Garden City, where 1,500 mature trees were cut down to widen roads. To shake the unconcerned people of Bangalore out of their apathy, the group hired professional mourners to sit around recently felled trees wailing and weeping. FULL ARTICLE | | Freeloader Meets the Next Generation At Disney's 'Camp Rock' World Premiere
Freeloader dives into the world of screaming pre-tween, tween and teen fans of Disney's latest attempt at a H.S. Musical redux, only to find those young folk are keen to out-Freeload him. FULL ARTICLE | |
What You Should Have Read, June 13, 2008
Mr. Murdoch Goes to War
The Atlantic provides some weekend reading with Mark Bowden's piece on The Wall Street Journal. Rupert Murdoch wants his Wall Street Journal to displace The New York Times as the world's paper of record. His ambitions could be good news for the newspaper industry— or another nail in the coffin of serious journalism. And how does Murdoch understands journalism? As content, a word he uses all the time, rather than as a form of literature or public service, and as a commodity whose value largely derives from its instant retail malleability. A short, crisp scoop that dramatically advances a major developing story—Obama's poll numbers down! Britney back in rehab! Steinbrenner to fire another manager!—can be neatly packaged for a dizzying variety of media: print, radio, TV, the Internet, or even cell-phone screens. It doesn't matter much to a fully integrated media conglomerate like News Corporation how its customers choose to access this content, as long as the transaction pays. Business and financial news is ideally suited to this kind of cross-seeding, since markets are now global and customers are tuned in all day, every day. One of the first strong messages Journal reporters and editors received from their new owners was that Murdoch wants scoops. He wants his reporters out in front of every competitor on the p***t. FULL ARTICLE | | > > Read All News at AdAge.com | | | | |
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