News Riffs: It's no surprise to me that Americans are taking in more news. How could they not? As reported in yesterday’s McPheters & Co. survey, Americans say they are watching about as much
TV news programming -- 2.4 hours per day -- in May 2002 as they did in October 2001, just after the Sept. 11 attacks. Since Sept. 11, the news rarely fails to live up to its billing. Anthrax, suicide
bombers, warnings from Tom Ridge (America’s travel planner) - all of this makes for compelling news, even when it’s on 24 hours a day. But is TV news a better place for advertising than it was before
Sept. 11? I say yes. The reason is that the hard quality of today’s news has reined in the tendency toward celebrity worship and idle gossip that reached its peak before Sept. 11. Do you realize the
Chandra Levy case was top of the hour every hour on Sept. 10? The priorities of news organizations were focused on what would entertain rather than inform. Now the emphasis is back – at least in part
– on information. That, I think is a big reason why consumers watch more news than they used to. There’s more news to watch. And if there’s no news, there's always Entertainment Tonight........
K Mart Riffs: I remember interviewing several people at multicultural media properties after K Mart announced its ethnic marketing emphasis in March. Almost to the one, they predicted that K
Mart would awaken major brands to the need to address the rainbow culture, not the white bread illusion that makes up the mass market. I see MGM Casinos has now hired a multicultural agency. The list
continues to grow. I think K Mart started the ball rolling in earnest. Now if they could only double their sales revenue........
AOL Riffs: How is AOL/TimeWarner going to rebound? Check out
the new promotion for Popular Science, which will aggressively reposition the magazine from its current tech-geek status, to sponsoring "Battlebots" on Comedy Central. Editor in Chief Scott Mowbray
told The Wall Street Journal the aim is "to elevate the nerd" in consumers' minds, and command more attention. See? Pop-up subscription windows do not a marketing campaign make. I like this direction
for PopSci.
