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When Ted Koppel left Nightline last November, many fans thought the show was effectively dead, seeing his departure as yet another indication of the decline of the network news. Instead, nine months later, the show’s audience is up 9 percent compared to a year ago.
The new team behind Nightline added lighter features and more celebrity coverage while continuing to maintain the show’s news focus with frequent segments on political and social topics, writes The Wall Street Journal. The result is a show that sometimes isn’t as high-minded as it was in the past, but the change may have been necessary. According to Andrew Tyndall, a TV news analyst for ADT Research, Ted Koppel had, in his last years, “lost his way.” Tyndall calls the changes “more a rejuvenation than a reinvention.”
In late June, Nightline tied new episodes of Late Show with David Letterman in ratings among adults ages 25-54 and adults ages 18-49. The show also beat Letterman episodes in total viewers for three weeks in a row in August.
All sectors of the media business will suffer from the weakened economy in 2008 and 2009, with a slump in local advertising particularly hurting newspapers and local TV, according to a new projection from Goldman Sachs.
Broadcast nets will experience…
The New York Times is shuttering its International Herald Tribune site; NYTimes.com will soon host the international news normally reserved for its sister website.
The move is not about cost savings, but rather about growth, NYTimes.com general manager Vivian Schiller…
Unilever’s Vaseline set forth on an unusual research project in a small town in Alaska. Setting up a storefront, the company began giving away free bottles of lotion and asking recipients to name the person who had recommended they come…
Meet the Press, the show hosted by Tim Russert for 17 years before his death last June, is beginning to slip in ratings.
Last month, CBS’s Face the Nation pulled ahead of Meet the Press for the first time in two…
Bloggers collectively create nearly one million blog posts each day, and half of bloggers believe blogs will be a primary source of news and entertainment in the next five years, according to Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report, MarketingCharts writes.…
Wal-Mart and Costco reported same-store gains in September, with sales rising 2.4% and 9% respectively. Sales at Target stores open at least a year fell 3%, writes Retailer Daily.
Below, fiscal results from the discount retail giants:
Sales of food and…
