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NBC took its Olympic coverage to heart and unveiled a mighty year-round primetime schedule to buyers on Wednesday.
NBC, which took a substantial economic hit as the result of the writers’ strike, is hoping to entice advertisers with its early announcement of a full 52 weeks of programming. Fall offerings include the wheezy, with ‘ER’ returning for its final season; the fresh, with drama ‘My Own Worst Enemy’ starring Christian Slater; and the recycled, with a remake of the campy 80’s series ‘Knight Rider.’
Fall will also host the new sitcom ‘Kath & Kim,’ starring Molly Shannon and Selma Blair and the returns of ‘Chuck,’ ‘Lipstick Jungle’ and ‘Life.’ New drama series include ‘Kings’ and ‘Merlin.’ Viewers who enjoy butt-kicking ladies will lament the death of ‘Bionic Woman.’ Viewers who enjoy snappy writing and hot twenty somethings playing 17-year-olds will cheer the return of ‘Friday Night Lights.’ The FNL reprieve, according to Mediaweek, is due in part to a deal NBC has with DirectTV to air fresh eps of the football drama in October with NBC airing the same eps in Feb 2009.
Buyers had kvetched that to truly be “year-round” schedule, NBC would have to include new scripted summer fare, not just reality shows. NBC obliged, just barely, announcing one new scripted summer show, drama The Listener. The rest of the programs for summer 2009 are all reality, including America’s Toughest Jobs, Shark Taggers and Chopping Block, a Kitchen Nightmares-type show.
A comprehensive schedule of NBC’s new lineup is available at Media Life.
Mel Karmazin is not one for modesty. During a keynote at the Media & Money Conference Tuesday, Karmazin - Sirius XM Radio CEO - said the company is clearly soon to be the most successful company in the audio entertainment industry…
FT Group, publisher of the Financial Times, saw total revenue leap 11% for the first nine months of 2008. Circulation and ad revenue grew, as did revenue from interactive data.
Ad revenue was up 1% over the first nine months…
Location-based services that allow marketers to connect with consumers wherever they are have long been considered the ideal in advertising. eMarketer is predicting that the opportunity will grow significantly in coming years, with the number of consumers using such services…
Comedy Central is building on the success of its two wildly popular fake-news programs, The Colbert Report and The Daily Show, adding a show called Chocolate News.
The new show will star David Alan Grier as the pompous host of…
Prices of list rentals are declining across the board and – for the first time ever - show a downward trend in every B2C and B2B category tracked, according to Worldata’s Fall 2008 List Price Index (see table), writes MarketingCharts.
Permission-based email…
Custom publications are being increasingly produced by specialty editors and designers (73%) rather than by those in communications roles, according to a study conducted by the Custom Publishing Council (CPC) in cooperation with Publications Management, writes MarketingCharts.
The survey, “Staffing and Compensation:…
