NBC’s unusual upfront garnered mixed reviews from the media crowd; some blamed the network for using the new format to draw attention away from a weak programming slate, while others liked the innovative format.
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NBCU produces nearly 100 health video clips per week across its various networks, local stations and web properties. Now, the network plans to package and distribute them across a network of niche websites.
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After Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. yanked its $580 million bid for Newsday on Saturday (via MediaPost and the Wall Street Journal), Cablevision announced Monday that it has reached an agreement to buy the
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Busy moms apparently aren’t willing to waste their “me time” watching television commercials.
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Federal tax rebates will give retail sales a significant and much-needed boost in the next two quarters, predicts TNS Retail Forward, saying retails sales growth will improve by as much as three percentage points in the third quarter and half that in the second quarter, MarketingCharts writes.
NBCU plans to launch a 24-hour cable news channel in New York in November, covering the New York region, including New Jersey and Connecticut.
Media and entertainment companies are in broad agreement on the way the digital market is evolving, where the opportunities lie and what will drive revenues over the next five years - but execution remains an issue, according to an Accenture survey, MarketingCharts writes.
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Spot Runner, successful newcomer to the TV ad sales and development biz, has closed a $51 million round of funding and is looking to begin an international expansion.
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Product placements for the first quarter of 2008 rose 6% on primetime programming for the 11 measured networks on broadcast (ABC, CBS, CW, FOX, MNT, NBC) and cable television (A&E, Bravo, HGTV, MTV, TLC), according to Nielsen, writes MarketingCharts.
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Microsoft, deciding not to make a direct offer to Yahoo shareholders for the company, has officially pulled its bid of $33 a share. The company had upped the bid from $31, but Yahoo had been holding out for at least $37 a share.
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Viacom’s Q1 earnings soared 33 percent, to $270 million, thanks in part to strong sales of the Rock Band video game. Revenue rose 15 percent, to $3.12 billion.
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Click to enlarge Though fashion still accounts for 41 percent of the total teen budget, total teen spending in the category declined nearly 20 percent year over year, pointing to a “discretionary recession,” according to the 15th semi-annual “Taking Stock With Teens” study by Piper Jaffray, MarketingCharts reports.
Time Warner Inc., following news that it slipped 36 percent in Q1 earnings from a year ago, announced that it will spin off the rest of its cable TV biz.
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Mobile phone vendors experienced a lull in the first quarter of 2008 (1Q08), shipping just 291.6 million units - an 11.6 percent downturn from the 330.8 million units shipped during the busy holiday quarter (4Q07), according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, writes MarketingCharts.
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The latest report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations showed that daily newspapers have been busily engaged in business as usual: losing readers.
The Commerce Committee is hoping to reverse changes to the ban on media cross-ownership that the FCC voted for last December.
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Paste is the latest magazine to carve out unusual space for advertising. The magazine placed contextual ads for BMW next to various editorial page numbers in its April issue.
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Google’s strong financial results for Q1 2008 - including a 33 percent growth in net US advertising revenues - confirms projections that the “Big Four” internet portals will weather the current economic turmoil, eMarketer reports (via Marketing Charts).
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eBay has sued Craigslist, saying that eBay’s stake in the classifieds site has been unfairly diluted by more than 10 percent.
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Brauchli After less than a year as managing editor at the Wall Street Journal, Marcus Brauchli has had enough of the job. He is expected to hand in his letter of resignation as early as today. No successor has been pinpointed as of yet.
