Time Warner (think AOL) proposed a plan to US Postal regulators to raise rates for independent publishers while locking in special bargain prices for Time Warner and other major media companies. The problem? Postal regulators have accepted the proposal. Freepress.com has a link to a letter to send a red flag to Congress.
The Unilever NV (makers of Skippy peanut butter and the various Lipton Teas) consumer product company has made what may be considered a radical move in advertising. In light of increasing numbers of eating disorders, especially in America’s female youth, Unilever NV has decided to “ban” models who are “excessively slim” or who “promote unhealthy slimness.” They haven’t given extreme specifics about what their new models will look like, but the BMI chart will be a starting point.
With all the money that consumer companies spend on advertising, it will be interesting to see how the decision to use more healthy weighted people affects sales.
Article here
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) the nation’s leading media monitoring organization, released another Media Advisory surrounding the 2008 presidential election.
FAIR contends that press coverage of the Democratic and Republican presidential debates is skewed. Journalists and pundits seem wholly disinterested (and annoyed) with so-called “third tier candidates” among Democrats and yet, curiously, don’t seem to mind the “crowded field” of Republican hopefuls. Seems progressive candidates, like Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and former Sen. Mike Gravel (D-AK) just don’t make the grade.
What’s significant about this is how thoroughly the press corps has internalized the values of corporate media and neoliberal economic and social philosophy to the point that progressive ideas are deemed to “lack any seriousness.” In short, the press corps limits the terms of the debate over what policy initiatives we should entertain.
Read the advisory here.
This afternoon, National Public Radio (NPR) began a series of feature stories on the future of the advertising industry. Here’s a link to the first installment of this series.
That NPR–the nation’s non-commercial, public service broadcaster–would devote this much airtime to advertising is revealing in and of itself. That said, this is a helpful and illuminating profile of ‘the state of the art’ when it comes to advertising strategies and techniques in the digital era.
This is just a little something extra on coporate golbalization. http://informationclearinghouse.info/. underneath the title is says “news you won’t find on CNN” I thought that was funny. (search corporate coporate globalization because I couldn’t get the article to work or the link)
This week’s issue of Newsweek has an article called “Trashing the Tube” by Steven Levy. He interviewed the owners of a new program called Joost. This is or soon will be a way to watch TV online. The creators of joost also created music programs which caused the demise of the music industry. There’s no telling what this new program will do to the TV industry. One of the creators said, “My job will be done when I have acquired the rights for every channel, every avant-garde French film, every soccer match…every piece of professional content the world has to offer”. Sounds like a crazy guy on a power trip in search of America’s next megaconglomerate to me.
This article discusses how children, even younger than 2, are regular watchers of TV because many parents believe that baby-oriented TV and DVD programs offer educational benefits. According The American Academy of Pediatrics, children in the United States watch about four hours of television every day. They recommend that children under age 2 should not watch any and older children should watch no more than 2 hours a day of quality programming. This believe by parents is a good things for advertisers because now they are able to target children more than ever. To read this article click here.
I thought this was a very interesting article, because although we have learned a lot about Low Power FM, I had not until now come across this rule. In this article it states that according to FCC regulation, if you have ever broadcasting without a license and that means ever, then you cannot receive a license for LPFM. This rule seemed pointless to me, only helping the NAB. The reason LPFM was created was to give people that had to resort to “pirate radio” a legal way, but this just seems to encourage illegal broadcasting.
LPFM
Here is an article that is trying to say that television newsrooms are shying away from using VNRs because of their “reputation” with the general public. The article is short but tries to sway the reader by saying VNRs are not as bad as one might think. Read here to view the article.
This site provides a good look into the problem of net neutrality. There is a YouTube video on the front page of the website that is kind of corny but makes the issue easy to understand. The site is savetheinternet.com, and there are ways to get involved to keep net neutrality, it also answers someone of the most prevalent questions people have about net neutrality.