• Janet Jackson still holds TiVo title
    Eight months later, Janet Jackson's infamous performance during the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show remains the most replayed moment in TiVo history, a representative for the digital video recording company said.
  • Music Videos Tap Video Games
    Over the past few years, entertainment has become more incestuous than ever. Rock stars became actors, comic book characters morphed into title roles in blockbuster films and everyone involved goes to the same after-parties. Now, the blending of popular culture has gone even further with a new MTV show of animated music videos featuring popular video game characters performing bands' songs.
  • And Now, a Few Words From the Urinal
    Richard Deutsch, an electrical engineer and former chiropractor, has come up with an invention that looks like a hockey puck with mesh wings, is sensitive to changes in light and has a tendency to go off with even the slightest bit of movement, which can prompt red flashing lights, crunchy guitar chords and a commercial announcement. The most notable detail, however, is its intended placement: in the urinals of public restrooms.
  • Baseball's Back in Washington, But Diamond May Not Be Papers' Best Friend
    When baseball returns to Washington, D.C., next year, it may not be a home run for the city's two daily papers--at least in the financial arena. While The Washington Post and The Washington Times will add coverage and possibly boost readership when the Montreal Expos relocate to the nation's capital, as was announced Wednesday, the papers are bracing for possible budgetary setbacks during the long baseball season.
  • Networks not Playing by Debate Rules
    The TV networks are balking at some of the rules that the Bush and Kerry campaigns have hammered out in advance of tonight's first presidential debate. At issue is a 32-page agreement between the campaigns on the structure of the debate, which lays out the ground rules on everything from camera angles to what kind of paper the candidates can use to take notes during the debate. It's the rules prohibiting shots of either Bush or Kerry while the other speaks that has irked the networks.
  • Ad Strategies: Sow Now, Reap Later
    It's time to begin budgeting for 2005. But what is the most advantageous use of an advertising budget for a small business? Whether the amount available is $5,000, $500,000, or $5 million, it's a question that bedevils execs at every outfit, large or small.
  • New Office From Cramer-Krasselt
    After years of seeking to acquire an agency in New York to get a foothold in the biggest, most challenging advertising market in America, Cramer-Krasselt has decided, in effect, that if you can't buy 'em, start 'em.
  • Retired execs team up to buy smaller ad firms
    With three-fourths of the $270 billion U.S. advertising market now controlled by five agency holding companies, conventional wisdom holds that there are few, if any, ad agencies left out there worth buying. But three well-known retired Chicago advertising executives hope to debunk that theory by forming their own advertising "holding company." The trio wants to partner with solid agencies that fly under the radar of the industry's colossal ad firms.
  • Why Make Leno a Lame Duck? To Protect a Late-Night Cash Cow
    After NBC's surprise announcement Monday of the unusual deal that secured Conan O'Brien as the next host of the "Tonight" show at the end of a five-year transition period, the question facing the network's executives yesterday was one the current host, Jay Leno, once memorably asked: What were you thinking?
  • Would You Buy the Future of Radio From This Man?
    Wired, October 2004 Seven years ago, Lee Abrams found himself in exile. Once the most influential radio guru of his generation, Abrams pioneered systematic audience research and "psychographics," connecting people's lifestyles to their listening habits. He invented a music format called album-oriented rock, or AOR, which in the 1970s shifted the music industry's focus from singles to albums and showed radio execs how to hold listeners and attract advertisers - to make money in the new, boundary-free world of FM.
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