• Nude Britney To Grace Tokyo Subway
    A nude magazine cover photo of a pregnant Britney Spears has been approved to run as an ad in the Tokyo subway system, following a heated indecency debate. Tokyo's subway authority reversed an earlier plan to censor the cover image on the Japanese edition of Harper's Bazaar magazine, in which a brunette Britney is wearing nothing but a gaudy necklace around her neck and covers her breasts with her hands. It is the same image gracing covers of the U.S. edition, which hit newsstands last month.
  • Who Killed The Newspaper?
    Newspapers have gone from being a digitally challenged medium to being an "endangered species," The Economist asserts in "Who Killed The Newspaper." The article claims "the business of selling words to readers and selling readers to advertisers, which has sustained their role in society, is falling apart." Newspapers that haven't already migrated to the Web will either do so or disappear, the magazine predicts. It notes that print circulation has been plunging in America, Western Europe, Latin American, Australia and New Zealand for decades, although print newspaper sales have curiously been rising in other parts of the world.
  • CBS, Time Warner Slate $50 Million Blitz For CW Launch
    CBS and Time Warner are breaking a re-branding campaign for their new CW Network, backed by an ad budget estimated at more than $50 million in promo time and paid media. The effort, being handled by ad agency Troika, is estimated to be the equivalent of what is spent annually by national marketers, such as E*Trade, Hertz and La-Z-Boy. The campaign is part of a broader marketing effort to reposition local stations and programming schedules from the former UPN and WB networks into CW, which begins programming as a single entity Sept. 20.
  • MindShare Creates Global R&D Post, Taps Millward Brown's Farr To Run It
    WPP's MindShare unit has named Andy Farr head of research and development worldwide, a newly created position at the media shop. Farr, who was chief research officer of WPP's Millward Brown research operations, will report to parent Group M's chief strategy officer Nick Emery. He will work closely with MindShare's econometric unit, as well as its ATG and Consumer Insights teams. Farr's work on consumer behavior was a key element of Group M's recent channel planning research, dubbed Connections.
  • CARU Slaps Warner On 'Superman' Spots
    The Children's Advertising Review Unit says that Warner Bros. has been bad boys for advertising a PG-13 rated movie--"Superman Returns"--on Cartoon Network. CARU, the industry's self-regulator, thinks touting the flick on kids' programming is wrong, given its rating. It says its guidelines require that content inappropriate for children not be advertised or promoted to them. "CARU was concerned that airing a commercial for a film rated PG-13 during children's programming with a substantial audience of children under 13 would create an interest in the film by the child audience and send an implicit message that the film is appropriate for …
  • 'Survivor' Dividing Teams By Ethnicity
    CBS is splitting up the contestants in a coming installment of "Survivor" along ethnic lines, with teams of blacks, whites, Asian-Americans and Hispanics competing against each other. But the castaways for "Survivor: Cook Islands" will eventually merge in a later episode. Host Jeff Probst defends the ethnic breakdown, telling CBS' "The Early Show" that the idea "actually came from the criticism that "Survivor" was not ethnically diverse enough." He admits that when you first hear the idea, it could sound like a stunt. The move has raised eyebrows even among seen-it-all reality executives. "That's a bold thing to do in …
  • ABC, ESPN Football Sold Out
    ESPN is practically sold out of its "Monday Night Football" ad inventory, and time is also tight for Saturday night college football on ABC. Plus, the NFL preview issue of ESPN, The Magazine will be its largest ad revenue-producing issue ever, with 110 pages of ads that will generate more than $10 million in revenue. "Prime-time Monday Night Football on ESPN and Saturday night college football on ABC has resonated with advertisers," says Ed Erhardt, president of ESPN ABC Sports Customer Marketing and Sales. The heavy demand has allowed us to price it very aggressively, he says, "at top of …
  • 'Stargate' May Survive Sci-Fi Cancellation
    Fans of "Stargate SG-1" have reason to hope the long-running science-fiction series may survive, despite being canceled by Sci Fi Channel. A spokesman for producer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer says the series, set to leave Sci Fi at the end of its 10th season next year, will live on. "We don't look at Stargate SG-1 as a TV show, but a franchise. It is our intention to vigorously find a find way to extend the franchise," says Jeff Pryor, who adds that MGM is looking at other possible outlets. He hopes to move forward, but no negotiations have taken place yet. Ratings for …
  • VNU Taps GE Exec With No Media Experience As New CEO
    In a move symbolic of its shift from its Netherlands-based roots, VNU finally named a new CEO Wednesday morning, tapping an executive from one of the most American corporations: David Calhoun, vice chairman of General Electric Co. Calhoun, who doesn't appear to have any direct experience managing the media and marketing research and publishing enterprises that comprise VNU's operations, has been named CEO and chairman of VNU's executive board. In addition to serving as vice chairman of GE, Calhoun has been president-CEO of its GE Infrastructure unit, which is responsible for GE's Aviation, Energy, Oil and Gas, Transportation and Water …
  • TV Guide Too Late To Celeb Mag Party?
    TV Guide's attempt to dump its digest format and listings to become a full-size entertainment magazine has led to a huge hemorrhaging of readers. Compared to the year earlier period, it lost about 5 million when the magazine trimmed its subscriber rolls as part of its radical makeover. According to the most recent report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, TV Guide has a circulation of 3,718,175--a decline of 59 percent for the six-month period ending June 30. That has dropped the magazine to just behind People. That's still a comfortable 518,000 over its 3.2 million rate base, and the …
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