• by John Gaffney , May 3, 2002

Maggie Riffs: Hey, it’s cool to be jaded and cynical, but diminishing the importance of winning a National Magazine Award is off-base. Content excellence needs to be celebrated. A New York Times article last week took pains to point out that these awards hardly guarantee or signify good financial performance. And I talked to more than a few people last week who wrote the awards off as marketing hype and indicative of inclusion in the old-boy network. I disagree. Any awards process will have detractors. And any award winner will have its counterpoint. You may not think Entertainment Weekly deserved General Excellence or you may not think that Jonathan Franzen propelled The New Yorker to an essay award. But the idea of awarding content in today’s magazine market should not be belittled. The quality of your content delivers your audience. If you’re a media pro, you want to know that the audience is receptive to your brand message. Content is like glue. If it’s real strong it will attract and keep loyal and attentive readers. These days, when content is determined more and more by focus groups, starch reports and other consumer research, it’s good to recognize excellence and risk. You may not agree with that recognition, but you may decide the winners are worthy of consideration for your next media buy………

Newsprint riffs: I don’t get this. The Newspaper Association of America recalled its report issued last week that said circulation numbers are declining slightly. Apparently, computer errors are demanding a recount of those numbers. But when those numbers originally came out, a NAA exec excused the circ downturn by saying that a tight economy caused promotion budgets to get cut. I feel strongly that you should practice what you preach in business. If you think advertisers should spend their way out of a downturn by advertising in newspapers, you should do that too. Newspapers need to spend money to keep their circulation figures moving forward. Too many websites and cable news channels will be happy to take those readers away………

Upfront riffs: Looks from some preliminary announcements that reality TV may have seen its better day on the networks. I say good riddance as a viewer. As a media person, I believe that the rise of reality TV showed that programs need to break the mold now and then. Reality TV pushed some tired sitcoms aside and made sitcoms a questionable strategy. You will see new kinds of reality TV. I think you’ll see the rise of “event TV.” Programmers want to create events that they can repeat (if they work) or terminate (if they don’t.) Events work on network TV. Ask ABC about the Oscars. Ask Fox about the Super Bowl. You can even ask Fox about Celebrity Boxing, but don’t ask them to make that a series.