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The Colbert Report is funny, smart, and a logical spin-off from Comedy Central’s Daily Show, writes Toni Fitzgerald of Media Life. In a quality that may not become fully appreciated until the elections in 2008, the show - which has Stephen Colbert acting as a fictional, pompous news anchor obviously modeled after Fox’s Bill O’Reilly and others - it looks as though it could act as a logical point of attraction for America’s “increasingly disgruntled left,” Fitzgerald writes.
Whereas the Daily Show makes fun of both right and left, Colbert could become for the left what Limbaugh was for the right in the years leading to the 2000 election.
The show, similar in tone and creative to the Daily Show, could be a smart programming move from Comedy Central, which wished to extend the Daily Show brand. If the network had made the Daily Show into a full hour, or added a weekend edition, which then flopped, it could have lost viewers in the process. But if The Colbert Show fails (after its promising start), it could be cancelled with little or no harm to its predecessor.
WPP, which employs more than 100,000 people, is said to be cutting several thousand jobs worldwide. The U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain were cited by the company as markets under pressure.
Cuts are expected to be centered in…
The new ads running below the fold on the front page of The New York Times sell for $75,000 on weekdays and $100,000 on Sundays, the New York Post reports.
The New York Times began selling advertising below the fold on…
Angered by a London bus advertisement that sent her to a website where she was told that she was going to hell, to spend all eternity in torment, comedy writer Ariane Sherine decided to launch a counter-campaign.
She began raising…
Apple’s iTunes Store is set to significantly shift its approach to selling songs online, including dropping copying protection (digital rights management, or DRM) and introducing a new pricing plan, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Rather than the standard 99 cents…
Online spending in several key categories, including Sports & Fitness and Video Games, increased and outperformed offline spending during the 2008 holiday season, while overall online and offline spending in other home and luxury-goods categories decreased across the board, according…
Walgreens December sales of $6.1 billion were an increase of 10.8% from $5.5 billion for the same month in 2007, the company announced. Same-store sales rose 4.9%, while comparable store front-end sales increased 0.4%.
Walgreens transactions in comparable stores increased…
