Interesting results from Dow Jones. Especially given the Merrill report the other day which was bullish (sorry!) on online ads.


As long as United Airlines hasn't gone belly-up by then, I'm going to be at this conference in DC in March. If you're planning to attend, there's only a few days left to pick up discounted tickets.

Was fortunate enough the other day to have a PhD workshop at the department with Larry Grossberg, who was in town for a lecture promoting his upcoming book "Caught in the Crossfire" about America's 'War on Children'. Fascinating stuff. And scary.



The whole 'hacks for Bush' thing is getting out of hand.

But why should we really be that surprised? There seems to be no moral outrage, certainly among the audience, who seem to just regard these instances as standard operating procedure. Nor are people suitably agitated by the amount of spending on PR by the administration.

Now it seems that Bush has ordered departments to cool it.

"We will not be paying commentators to advance our agenda. Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet," he said.

We'll see.

And, of course, it's not as though there aren't other ways for folks in less high-profile positions to make their opinions known.


Somehow, after Spongebobgate, this was probably inevitable....


And you gotta love this, even if you don't get C-Span 3:

The Times has a piece this morning (no link because of registration) based on an upbeat Merrill Lynch report that says:

"Online advertising is expected reach $9.7bn in 2004, or about 3.7 per cent of total US advertising spending... [and] is expected to grow 19 per cent this year as the nation's largest advertisers shift budgets from print and network television to cable and the internet."

The story uses those figures to put recent online M&A among top media brand names in some context, specifically about advertiser demand for premium pages, and premium positioning.

It seems to me that such a force would naturally drive increased amalgamation and collaboration between top echelon names, more special sections or breakouts within individual online publications, and quite likely more personalisation with aggregated content appearing in many locations.

One crucial thing is that advertisers don't assume that this enhanced commercial muscle leaves them holding all the cards and able to insist on new and ever more garish ways to piss off readers. (I mean, have you seen the Daily Mail's "write your own headline" ad that leaps off every stage page on Teamtalk.com?

In all, though, seems like a bright sign for the publishing industry. As the guy from Dow Jones said, if this uptick in online ads continues, publishers literally won't have enough pages to place the ads on.

What I just can't get my head around, though, is when folks from the business side call web pages "inventory". That's even worse than when they started calling stories "content".


Elswhere, The Washingtonian handicaps how the White House Press Room will pan out in the second term...

Meanwhile, this from the Press Office today:

President Bush will host a working dinner for French President Jacques Chirac in Brussels on February 21, 2005. The President plans to be in Brussels for meetings with NATO and EU leaders on February 22, 2005. The President looks forward to working together with President Chirac and all our European allies and partners to strengthen freedom, democracy, and security throughout the world.

Sure he does...



Finally; one of those lines every hack wants to overhear. Sitting in Starbucks in Paternoster Square this lunchtime, a headhunter at the next table leaned over to his lattemate and said: "I swear to God, if this gets out we'll all be screwed, but...."

No, no, I can't...

Johnny Carson dead at 79.

Quick, which "Tonight Show" got the biggest-ever rating, (apart from the farewell show)? Hint - it was in 1969.

This one.

The most influential figure in television history? Possibly. That debate is the stuff of a course in popular culture (hmmmm, there's an idea...) But was he truly as God-like as this gushing obit maintains?

He was certainly "of his time" and the end of his show in 1992 marked the end of an era, in an era when that cliche was overused.

Without him there would be no Letterman, and subsequently, no Jon Stewart. But for the sake of argument, here's the difference. Look at "Tonight Show" episodes from twenty-five years ago - or more obviously from the mid-to-late '80s after Letterman's emergence - and leaving aside the contemporaneous joke references, how much of Carson's schtick really stands up today?

As "Laugh-In", in its own way, was hugely innovative, it made a virtue of its limited shelf-life. You couldn't imagine that show, with that format, happening in such a fresh or unexpected way at any time other than the late '60s/early '70s.

Even SNL knew that the longevity of format shows depends on freshness both in on-screen talent and writing, and regular infusions of both were needed to smooth out the inevitable peaks and troughs.

But hey. What do I know?

Anyway, for a perfect post-modern tieback, how about the SNL sketch when Dana Carvey as Johnny, and Phil Hartman as a brilliant Ed McMahon interview Chris Rock as Arsenio and try to get in touch with "the street"...


On an industry-related note, we have a story in tomorrow's paper that says Napster is "considering moving into films and video games", quoting their CEO saying the company is looking at applying its online music model to films, TV programming and other video content. Now a Napster/TiVo hookup - that'd be something...


So... the Katie Couric to CBS story ends up with, probably predictably, NBC falling over themselves to give her even more money so she won't leave. More interesting, though, is the throwaway line about Martha Stewart taking over from Donald Trump on The Apprentice.
And you're surprised by this why, exactly?


Finally.... how to know that you were born to write this story:
17.20 UPDATE 1-Blizzard wallops Northeast U.S., snarls travel
By Greg Frost

Stay safe, those of you on the east coast.


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