• by September 15, 2004

2005, A GREEK TRAGEDY - Talk about your quadrennial year in ad spending hangovers. As U.S. ad economists debate the impact the so-called "hammock year" effect will have on ad spending growth in 2005 - you know, the year between two Olympics - imagine how the advertising seers must feel in Greece.

As might be expected given the Athens venue of the 2004 Summer Olympic Games, demand for local media time and space surged in Greece during the period surrounding the Games, as did the cost of advertising in the market.

"In Greece, media costs have risen by an estimated 30 percent," calculated Starcom MediaVest Group in a global post-buy analysis of the Summer Games it circulated to clients last week. "Greek local media has also experienced a surge in tourism profits, as well as higher levels of print and radio consumption." Since much of that local media exposure no doubt was aimed at travelers to the Olympic Games, the nation's ad economy could see a decline in 2005 of, well, Olympic proportions.

The SMG post-Olympics analysis also reveals some fascinating patterns in other international markets that could well have implications for the United States, especially given current population and demographic trends. While NBC emphasized mostly hard-bodied sports like beach volleyball, swimming, diving, gymnastics, and track and field in its primetime coverage of the Games, they were not among the most watched events in some other important media markets, according to SMG.

"The most watched sport occurred in China when 47 million - 15 percent of all Chinese - watched the men's singles table tennis finals," reports the agency, noting, "Unfortunately, [China's] Wang Hao lost to the Korean Ryn Seung Min."

Why is that a relevant observation for the U.S. marketplace? Have you looked at the census lately? It's no coincidence that American TV networks are giving more coverage (well, some anyway) to other sports with international appeal - soccer for example - so we wouldn't be surprised if, come the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, NBC actually aired table tennis in primetime. Of course, by then, Dick Ebersol will have successfully lobbied the International Olympic Committee to rule that skimpy bikinis are the new regulation uniform for the game. You know, a ping-pong thong.

FORGET THE BOOBS, APPARENTLY IT'S REALLY A GLUED TUBE - When the folks at Vogel Communications first pitched us in their new breakthrough magazine title, we weren't sure exactly what category it was supposed to be breaking through. The magazine, which is called Glued was positioned as the "official magazine" of "America's favorite pastime." Surely, we thought it must be a magazine about baseball, which is after all, America's national pastime. But baseball already has numerous "official magazines," so it couldn't be that. And when Vogel noted that the "fun, fresh glossy" would soon hit Barnes & Noble newsstands, we wondered if it might not be another of the litany of literary mags that have propped up in recent years to cover the subject of books. But then we remembered it was good old B&N itself that prematurely closed the book on Book, a magazine that was beginning to develop a genuine following with its reading matter about, well, reading matter. But now that matters not.

As it turns out, Glued has nothing to do with anything so high-minded as books, nor anything so active as baseball, says the new title's editor-in-chief Candace Korchinsky, offering a final clue: "If you need reasons to stay on the couch, you'll find them all here." If you guessed a magazine about a favorite couch-oriented pastime of American adults you may have been wrong, at least if you think about couches the way the Riff does. And thank goodness, because in that context, the title Glued would invoke something that is tasteless even to us. Want another clue? Think potatoes. Or more specifically, couch potatoes. You know, glued in front of the set like a bunch of couch potatoes.

With the mystery of Glued's editorial content solved, one other mystery remained. How could Glued be the official magazine of that American pastime? Isn't that TV Guide magazine? And if not TV Guide, what about the other ones published by Seattle-based Vogel Communications, which touts itself as "one of North America's leading publishers of television magazines."

In any case we do think the magazine's title is inspired and will surely resonate with media planners who, of late, have become obsessed with anything that even remotely connotes involvement, engagement, attentiveness, or what the Internet folks used to call stickiness. And we can't think of a verb that evokes that more than Glued. Now let's see how long it sticks on the newsstands.