CNBC's President Lauds Both Jim Cramer And Donny Deutsch Ad Age does a quick Q&A with Mark Hoffman, the CNBC president whom it credits with helping boost the ratings of the business cable channel. While viewership remains comparatively small, the quality of the CNBC audience is what appeals to advertisers. They can reach the corporate boardroom by spending on CNBC's shows. Hoffman explains in this Q&A his various programming moves over the last year, saying the strategy was sometimes difficult to pull off because several of his live broadcasts had to appeal equally to prime afternoon and evening viewers on …

Daniel E. Aks of Folio: argues that too many magazine-industry professionals, eager to get onboard the brand-extensions bandwagon, believe that simply repurposing magazines for the Web constitutes a successful strategy.  The challenge is more complicated than that, he says. What’s the best way to make the transition?  "Shift from a magazine orientation into a ubiquitous, targeted, reader and advertiser-centric media information and services enterprise. This will lead to more products and services for the existing customer base, as well as attract new customers. Most importantly, publishers have to accept that the initial brand extensions are not necessarily the sexy …

Microsoft has been quietly working with The New York Times on what could be a revolutionary bit of software aimed at helping the newspaper industry better survive its current malaise.  Later this year the Redmond, Washington-based software giant will show off its on-screen reader, which somewhat duplicates on a computer the experience of actually reading a physical newspaper.  Meaning:  Pages "turn," stories show up in vertical columns, photos appear in more or less standard newspaper formats.  But of course the software will offer value-added features.  For example, a user can call up a catalog of every photo that appeared …

Tim Barker of the Orlando Sentinel sums up the current brouhaha over so-called stealth advertising, asking industry veterans if the practice has hit its peek, and whether it may be an inappropriate way to market products.  The piece stakes out no position but reports on various campaigns and industry reactions to them.  One academic, Stuart Fischoff, professor emeritus of media psychology at CalState, Los Angeles, tells Barker, "It's desperation as well as innovation. And it's never going to stop."  Acknowledging that stealth marketing is both controversial and unproven, a number of industry insiders share their skepticism over its use.  …

Recognizing a powerful trend-- albeit one still in its early stages -- TV Guide this week has introduced a new column that identifies programs that can be downloaded to various digital devices for viewing later. Named “Downloads,” the column guides its readers to programming available  on broadcasters' Web sites, on video portals such as Google Video or AOL's In2TV, on Apple's iTunes Store, or on various mobile phone platforms.  "The digital age has sparked a time-shift/place-shift phenomenon in television program viewing choices," TV Guide's editor-in-chief, Ian Birch, said in a prepared statement. "Today, we all have the ability to …

It's long been a bone of contention in the magazine and advertising fields: what value to place on magazines placed before readers' eyes in public spaces--doctors' waiting rooms, airports, hair salons, and so forth.  The skepticism has come mainly from the buyer side, since there's been scant hard evidence that an advertiser should pay for a reader who fumbles through a free magazine for several minutes while waiting to get on to other matters.  But a new study, co-sponsored by Time Inc. and Mediaedge:cia, has found that public-space magazines are indeed valuable, if not quite as valuable as magazines …

After a Washington Post reporter complained to then White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan last week that the White House and Air Force One seemed always to be tuned to Fox News, McClellan arranged for CNN to be shown to members of the press who preferred the Time Warner-owned channel. "My question would be, is there a White House policy that all government TVs have to be tuned to Fox?" The Post's Jim VandeHei asked McClellan aboard Air Force One last week, noting that his question was intended to be serious. "Never heard of any such thing," McClellan responded. But …

Let's put this into the category of Unintended Consequences.  In the end, the Los Angeles Times was not too happy about it, but Paramount Pictures presumably saw the whole thing as a boon.  Here's what happened, as reported by the Times itself.  In a co-promotional effort, the paper and the studio had arranged to have 4,500 newspaper boxes in and around the city wired so that they played the theme from “Mission:Impossible” when their doors were opened.  (“M:I: III” debuts on Friday, May 5.)  However, the bright-red digital device that activated the music were clearly visible protruding from behind …