Tech World Mightn’t Notice If Print Took Lengthy Hiatus

Responsible for
newspaper woes?

A blog post by David A. Utter of WebProNews points out an article by a Tucson Weekly columnist who made a (sort of) tongue-in-cheek suggestion that print journalists should take a year off to prove that bloggers would have nothing to write about without their printed counterparts, and that newspapers’ current struggles have come about mostly thanks to Craigslist, eBay, Google, and online journals.

ABM Celebrates Centennial, Announces Literacy Program

American Business Media will make merry Jan. 12 in New York as part of its centennial birthday bash, celebrating business media’s impact on the global economy and announcing a literacy program to promote reading to school children in need.

Spalding to Bounce 100,000 Times for Charity

Students from Duke and North Carolina will attempt to set a Guinness World Record for the longest continuous basketball game, with no timeouts or intermissions, and will use Spalding’s new Never Flat basketball in the attempt, Brandweek writes.

Controversy Doesn’t Help Daniel’s Numbers

Despite the controversy and buzz surrounding NBC’s new religious drama The Book of Daniel - including four affiliates dropping it - Friday’s two-hour premiere, which began at 9 p.m., averaged a 2.7 adults 18-49 Nielsen overnight rating, finishing third in its timeslot, Media Life reports.

International Players Launching English-Language All-News TV Channels

Several international all-news TV channels are preparing to launch English-language programs this year, including a French project, which remains unnamed, and is scheduled to start by December with $91 million in government funding, the International Herald Tribune reports.

Stern Debut Update: F-Bombs Fly

Even though Howard Stern made a rule to not curse on his new Sirius satellite radio show, the first expletive came ten minutes into the show and the first F-bomb 22 minutes in, the Seattle Times reports. After that the article reports a free-for-all.

USA Today’s Custom Research Ad Packages Now Available

USA Today is now offering a new program with which advertisers can get information on the performance of their ads, Editor & Publisher reports. The paper will use its research staff to offer custom packages to advertisers based on measuring the success of an ad compared to specific goals.

MyAdBase.com Encourages Press Release Postings

MyAdBase.com, a site which caters to sellers of ad space in the U.K. and Ireland, as well as global ad space buyers, now allows suppliers to post press releases, the company has announced. Suppliers must register (for free) with the site; once they are members, they can upload press releases, complete with contact information.

AT&T Online Campaign To Reach Half of Web Users

Click to enlarge

The big, fat AT&T campaign launched on New Year’s Day will hit the web on Jan. 9 with a splash that the company says will be among the largest in internet history, according to AdAge. Not quite half of all web users - about 137.8 million unique users - will see ads for the newly merged company.

Search Marketers Spent $5.75B, Mostly on Paid Placement

Advertisers in the U.S. and Canada spent $5.75 billion on search engine marketing (SEM) in 2005 - 44 percent more than in 2004 - according to “The State of Search Engine Marketing 2005″ report, released today (Monday) by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), which predicts that SEM spending in North America will reach $11 billion in 2010, MarketingVOX reports. The survey found that 83 percent of SEM spending, or $4.7 billion, was spent in 2005 on paid placement.

Though four out of five advertisers report they engage in organic search engine optimization (SEO), it accounted for only some 11 percent of overall spending.