Just one week after the nation's largest print advertiser admonished the magazine industry for failing to address concerns surrounding that medium's audience circulation audits, the newspaper industry is becoming caught up in a swirl of revelations surrounding discrepancies in the circulation of major papers. Last week three major dailies - Newsday, the Chicago Sun Times and Hoy - acknowledged serious errors in their circulation reports. The Tribune Co. was the source of much of the lousy news. First, Long Island's Tribune-owned Newsday appeared to fess up to circulation misdeeds, announcing late Thursday that it would reduce its reported September 2003 publisher's statement of circulation of 579,729 daily and 671,819 Sunday by about 40,000 daily and by about 60,000 Sunday. The Tribune's Hispanic newspaper, Hoy, which had been rapidly expanding during the past year, will also reduce its reported circulation during the same period of 92,604 daily and 33,198 on Sunday by approximately 15,000 and 4,000, respectively. Both papers will make slight adjustments to their March 2004 circulation figures as well. Earlier in the week, the Chicago Sun Times, the tabloid rival to the Tribune's Chicago Tribune, admitted that it had purposely overstated its circulation. Both Newsday and Hoy had come under fire last February when four companies filed a lawsuit alleging that circulation figures were inflated to support higher advertising rates. In the federal suit, three restaurants and a real estate firm claimed that the papers and their distributors conspired to misrepresent circulation to the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Employees at Newsday and Hoy were even accused of maintaining false computer files that altered circulation figures, and of throwing out bundles of papers without accounting for them. According to a press release, "a Tribune Company audit determined that during portions of 2002 and 2003 some copies of Newsday that were distributed for free as part of a home delivery promotional campaign were improperly recorded as paid copies. In addition, some single copy sales could not be verified because of inadequate record-keeping by one of Newsday's outside distributors." As a result of the audit, which they are working on with ABC, Newsday's vice president of circulation has been placed on administrative leave. "We take these matters very seriously," said Newsday's publisher Raymond Jansen in the release. "Once these discrepancies were brought to our attention we moved quickly to correct the situation and are instituting new policies and procedures to prevent it from happening again." While Newsday has taken steps to police itself, the Nassau District Attorney's office opened an investigation on Friday to determine whether criminal charges are warranted. The admission by major newspapers that they have tinkered with circulation comes just after the magazine business has been taken to task by many for flaws in its circulation measurement, first brought to light during the very public divorce between Rosie O'Donnell and Gruner + Jahr over now defunct magazine. Last week during the Association of National Advertisers' Print Advertising Forum in New York, General Motors' top print media buying executive, Linda Thomas Brooks, said it would take years for the magazine industry to regain marketers' confidence in their circulation reports (MediaDailyNews June 11).
Much to the chagrin of some broadcast industry players, the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau generated considerable buzz with its pre-upfront positioning that cable is now part of a "One TV World." But its next round of positioning might well be dubbed, "We Are The World." In a report the CAB quietly began circulating to top advertisers and agency executives over the past two weeks, the ad bureau is extending its one world concept into the so-called "multicultural upfront," a period following the general market upfront when advertisers and agencies have turned their attention to buying time on TV outlets that reach minority viewers, mainly Hispanic and African Americans. Importantly, the report makes no reference to the biggest players in the multicultural TV marketplace - Univision and Telemundo - but focuses on the contribution that more than a dozen cable networks are making to that marketplace. Undoubtedly, some of the networks being pitched by the CAB - such as Hispanic networks, Casa Club, ESPN Deportes, and La Familia, or new African American channels like TV One - are still unfamiliar to many major marketers who are increasingly looking to tap the multicultural marketplace. "I would encourage all that are attempting to enter the market to pursue it and use the insights and the demographic segmentation," said James Speros, chief marketing officer of Ernst & Young, and chairman of the Association of National Advertisers, who is among the top marketing executives that have been thumbing through the 50-page report, which is a companion to a new multicultural area of the CAB's website, a site, which by the way has recently been redirected from www.cabletvadbureau.com to www.onetvworld.org as part of the CAB's overall repositioning in that area. Both the report and the site are chockfull of Census data, as well as media research information that are expected to help shape Madison Avenue's thinking as it allocates millions of dollars toward multicultural media buys for the 2004-05 TV season. "What we decided to do was bring multicultural to the forefront during the upfront," says Cynthia Perkins-Roberts, director of marketing development at the CAB and author of the Multicultural Marketing Guide. "If you're thinking Hispanic and you're just thinking Univision, you don't understand what's going on." In effect, Perkins-Roberts says the CAB is taking an old play out of its game book - that cable is essential for delivering audiences under-delivered by broadcast TV outlets - and extending it to the multicultural marketplace. "In the one TV world, when you're using Hispanic TV, you can't just buy broadcast anymore. You have to buy cable, as well," she says. Profiles on ten Hispanic cable networks, including Univision's own Galavision, are included in the report, along with three channels aimed at African Americans. What are not included in the report are any outlets targeting other multicultural audiences, including Asian Americans, or the gay/lesbian marketplace. Perkins-Roberts says that might change in future editions of the report, but that currently the multicultural upfront is primarily an African American and Hispanic phenomenon.
Advertisers, when evaluating magazines these days, are talking more and more about "wantedness," using metrics like average-price-paid and involvement indexes. Smithsonian, which covers the world of the arts, history, culture, and science while drawing from its famous Washington, D.C.-based museum namesake, is one of those that scores high on such measures. It also delivers a sizable circulation of over two million--reaching a total audience of 7 million plus, according to Spring 2004 MRI data. That audience also represents a dedicated, invested subscriber base, allowing the magazine to boast of the sort of reader loyalty that helps during a tough couple of advertising years. Unlike many titles, Smithsonian derives more than half of its income through subscription fees (with a subscription price of $34, few discounts available). Smithsonian, approaching its 35th anniversary, has been revitalized in recent years under Editor-in-Chief Carey Winfrey. Winfrey arrived at the magazine nearly three years ago with big shoes to fill, as he is only the third person to hold that position in the magazine's 34-year history, and his predecessors logged 10 and 20 years, respectively. Winfrey, whose career has taken him from positions as a reporter at the New York Times to editing stints at the now defunct Cuisine Magazine and American Health, and even a tour running Columbia University's Magazine Journalism program, does not shy away from admitting that Smithsonian is highbrow stuff, targeted to an older reader--the kind of reader that Madison Avenue too often shies away from. "You have to have lived a little to read this magazine," he says. And you have to be willing to invest some time. The magazine frequently includes 4,500-word pieces, such as recent articles on growing coffee in the jungle or the great diamond hoax of 1872. According to MRI, Smithsonian delvers a dual audience with an average age of 53. While its readers have a high income (median income is more than $60,000 for women, $70,000 for men), it is not always the easiest sell. "It is a challenge to sell a magazine whose median age is older than the buyer," says publisher Amy Wilkins. Adds Winfrey: "As the Wall Street Journal has pointed out, older readers over 40 have more disposable income, are very savvy and sophisticated. Advertisers have been gradually waking up to that fact." Wilkins says that instead of focusing on age, she is able to sell the Smithsonian reader's depth of interests and experience. "We have more post-graduate degrees than any other magazine. Plus, given their education, income, and propensity to explore, the magazine's audience is ideal for travel and financial services advertisers. That's not to say that Smithsonian hasn't needed some freshening up. Over the last three years, Winfrey has pushed to make the magazine less staid and more relevant, with fresher historical pieces that are tied into what is going on in the world. "This has always been a magazine that has prided itself on timelessness, but it needed to be a bit more timely," he says. "The challenge was to do it in a way that did not upset the loyal readers who liked it just the way it was." That has meant running historical-based features with a 21st-century hook. Recent stories have covered the British experience in nation-building in Iraq and Marco Polo's travels in Afghanistan. In addition to the magazine's hefty features, regular sections include This Month in History, where the book usually goes back through the decades to highlight key historical events; "Phenomena and Curiosity;" and People File, among others. Starting in January, the book is planning to run a regular feature commemorating the magazine's 35-year anniversary. There is also talk of TV programming related to Smithsonian, particularly given the growing popularity of similarly themed networks like the History Channel and the Discovery Channel.
Now that Intel has effectively cornered the U.S. microprocessor market, they have set their sights on world domination. In a 30-second TV spot that won't run in the United States, Euro RSCG New York attempts to suggest that Intel's Pentium 4 processor can help turn your offspring into a genius. In a typical public school hallway, teenage versions of Mohandas Gandhi, Ludwig van Beethoven, Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare, Amelia Earhart, and finally, Albert Einstein are seen. The spot's tagline: "Bring home a PC with Intel technology inside and see how your child grows." Apparently, the ad is tweaked for local tastes in the nations where it will be seen--for example, in Russia, the ad includes the 19th-century poet Aleksandr Pushkin. While this seems to make about as much sense as suggesting that the brand of spark plugs in the car your kid occasionally drives can help him get into Harvard, it is nevertheless a clever idea. But were I a developing-world viewer of this spot, wouldn't I assume that if Intel could actually deliver on this promise, the U.S. market would be crawling with kids who actually listen to Beethoven instead of Ludacris and read Shakespeare instead of Cosmo Girl? The Pentium 4 processors in the computers I let my kids use are little pressed to download Faulkner or find out more about the Dred Scott decision, but rather to keep open multiple chat rooms where Sarah can refute the claims made by Emily that she told Jeff that Ben told Mike he really liked Amanda, who is no longer speaking to Barbara because she had a sleepover at Sarah's, and..whatever! I think there is a clear case to be made that computers are making kids dumber, not smarter. "Go to the library and look it up"--once uttered as frequently as "Because I'm your mother!"--is passing into the twilight of familial oratory, since once there, no one has a clue how the Dewey Decimal System works, and you can't (or shouldn't, anyway) cut and paste from the offline encyclopedia. But one-click research is just the tip of the iceberg. You can buy entire term papers online. You can use your handheld during exams to send out for correct answers to test questions. You can email your homework answers to everyone in the class with a mouse click. You can appropriate sections of--or entire--documents, and rearrange the sentences in order to give them your own voice. You can even log on to sites where out-of-work teachers help you with your homework. While the online age might open up a whole new world of information to Third World kids who are starved for resources, in this country it is simply homogenizing information as kids repurpose the same "scholarship." The day will come, if it hasn't already, when an eighth-grade history teacher sees the same opening line 28 times. The Internet, rather than opening up a new world of different cultures, is instead enforcing conformity as kids use email and IMing to project their views of what is "cool" and what is not. Anyone who disagrees with the predominant perspective is marginalized. The oppressive milieu of the hallway and lunchroom has been electronically ported into the home. Let's face it--the only thing Intel brings to the party is enough processor speed to play online games and download music. Word processors, perhaps the only really productive school tool on a PC, work perfectly fine with a Pentium 1. But I'm sure that Bill Shakespeare's parents thought quills were just lost bird features.