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I have seen no less than a million of these "Housewife discovers teeth whitening secret ads on facebook and just about every single website with any advertising content on it. I refuse to pay any money to these shills by clicking on their ads, but my curiosity is getting the better of me. Has anyone out there actually found out what this stupid thing is and want to share so I can stop being freaked out by all the teeth on my computer screen? Is anybody else experiencing these ads, or is it just targeting me and my aging, yellowing...

The Northern California Media Workers Guild said late Wednesday that five members of the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial department are being laid off, the latest in a series of staffing cuts at the troubled daily newspaper. The Guild didn’t indicate which editorial staffers were losing their jobs. Five staffers in the Chronicle’s classified advertising department, four of them Guild members, agreed to job buyouts last week, according to the union, and “at least one voluntary layoff has been accepted in editorial, the Guild said. That would mean at least 11 jobs have been eliminated this month, after earlier rounds of...

I thank the Fates every day that my greatest professional mistakes came when nobody was watching. This morning, as her newspaper reported the spiking of a piece of the sort she had bad-mouthed, Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth must be wishing that the Fates had been as kind to her. Earlier this summer, Weymouth got in Dutch when a Post plan to sell off-the-record access to reporters and government officials at "salons" at Weymouth's home was made public by Politico. Weymouth and Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli quickly canceled the events after much confusion over whether the paper had put...

The right-wing media’s single-minded focus on a handful of targets over the past months and its success in pushing those stories into the mainstream have underscored the sharp divide between traditional news organizations and the bloggers and talk show hosts aggressively pursuing an ideological agenda on-line and on TV and radio. From birthers to tea parties to town halls and ACORN, the scandal-plaged anti-poverty group — not to mention President Obama’s speech last week to school children and the background of former White House aide Van Jones — issues initially dismissed or missed entirely by the national media have burst,...

It has become a familiar chain reaction: Talk-show hosts whip up a noisy controversy, which hits higher decibels as it spreads to the establishment media, which costs some unfortunate soul his job. But now the middleman -- the journalistic gatekeepers of yore -- may no longer be necessary. By the time White House environmental adviser Van Jones resigned over Labor Day weekend, the New York Times had not run a single story. Neither had USA Today, which also didn't cover the resignation. The Washington Post had done one piece, on the day before he quit. The Los Angeles Times had...

IN one of the best scenes in “The Hucksters,” one of the best movies about advertising, Sydney Greenstreet, as the demanding client who makes Beautee soap, tells Clark Gable, as a Don Draper-ish adman named Victor Norman, how to peddle his product — or anything else. “Beautee soap, Beautee soap, Beautee soap,” Greenstreet intones. “Repeat it until it comes out of their ears. Repeat it until they say it in their sleep. Irritate them, Mr. Norman. Irritate, irritate, irritate them.” Jay Leno is no soap. And he is certainly no Beautee. But by Monday night, when “The Jay Leno Show”...

Some habits die hard in TV -- even the antiquated ones, like fall premiere week. With so many distractions competing for viewers' time (including an explosion of original cable fare), the thought of trying to cram a crowded plate of new shows down their throat at the same time seems ludicrous. In just one week -- Sept. 21 through 27 -- the broadcasters are stuffing more than 43 new and returning shows. And then there's the several early launches (mostly on the CW and Fox) airing their second or third segs that week, or a handful of shows that make...

Money-losing Newsweek hopes to break even by 2011 and plans to as much as double its subscription rate over the next two years. Ann McDaniel, managing director of Newsweek, which is owned by The Washington Post Co., said the magazine will aim for a "smaller base of very committed subscribers and get more money from each of them," while speaking at The Post Co.'s annual shareholders meeting at the company's D.C. headquarters. Analysts suggested that the new Newsweek is modeling its editorial strategy on England's Economist, and now it appears to be doing the same thing with its business strategy....

The marketing executive at the center of a controversial series of Washington Post-sponsored dinner "salons" has resigned from the newspaper some 10 weeks after the events were canceled, The Post said Friday. Charles Pelton, who had helped organize and promote the monthly dinners as The Post's newly hired general manager of events and conferences, made no mention of the controversy in his resignation letter to Post President Stephen P. Hills. Instead, Pelton wrote, "Given the current circumstances with regard to the resources needed to launch [an events business], my family and I have decided not to relocate to Washington, D.C.,"...

Fans of Jay Leno may have high expectations for the comedian's new show beginning Monday night. But in negotiating ad rates, NBC and advertisers have set the bar low. In the weeks leading up to NBC's launch of "The Jay Leno Show," advertisers are buying spots for about half what they'd spend per commercial in new episodes of dramas on competing networks at the same time of night, executives say. snip The number of people watching shows on weeknights between 10 and 11 p.m. on NBC, CBS Corp.'s CBS and Walt Disney Co.'s ABC has declined 23% from three TV...

As a curmudgeon who has embraced many of the new technologies of journalism, I want to draw a line. Let’s quit tweet, tweet, tweeting like the birdbrains do. I don’t care what your friend had for lunch. I don’t care how many people are following you through Twitter.com. Or Facebook, for that matter. My intelligence drops just about every time I see a tweet pop up on a web page I frequent. I really like Missouri basketball player Kimmie English. He’s a bright, intelligent, witty kid. He speaks in complete sentences. His expresses opinions clearly in person and I suspect,...

If you're watching more TV on your computer these days -- and less on an actual TV -- you're not alone. A survey by the nonprofit Conference Board released Tuesday showed that nearly a quarter of households in the U.S. now view television programs online. That's up from 20% last year. The quarterly Consumer Internet Barometer survey found that news shows were watched by 43% of online viewers, followed by sitcoms, comedies and dramas, watched by 35%. Slightly less than 20% viewed reality shows online, and 18% took in sports. Viewership of the Hulu online service -- which offers shows...

There is no doubt about it: Network television desperately needs a comeback this fall. A 2008-09 season that produced only one clear new hit and saw several solid veterans slump was followed by a summer in which tumbleweeds could be seen blowing across ratings charts. And all of this happened amidst a whirlwind of well-known challenges, from the floundering economy to audience fragmentation to an increasingly empowered viewer dictating the when and how of consumption. And while every year the white knight known as the upfront marketplace comes galloping majestically along to save the day, in 2009 the broadcast nets...

If the year's first four months defied all expectations for what Hollywood could do in a recession, this summer delivered some sobering reality. Through the end of April, domestic box-office receipts leaped 17% while admissions surged nearly 16% from the previous year, according to Hollywood.com. But as the weather turned hot, business cooled: From May 1 through Aug. 31, attendance was down 2.4% from 2008 and 6% from 2007. Summer box-office revenues rose 1.3%, not even enough to account for ticket price inflation, let alone the premiums charged in a growing number of 3-D theaters. In the midst of the...

After months or "reorganizing," the rubber hits the road today at the Palm Beach Post. By the end of working hours, some 20 newsroom staffers will be gone in the latest round of buyouts/layoffs. Some have already packed their bags and taken the reduced severance package. Award-winning feature writer Christine Evans left on her own volition recently and is now teaching at a private school. Photo Editor Pete Cross took the buyout early as well. So did Deputy Metro Editor Maria Garcia. A few copyeditors were given the heave-ho last night. Updated: Resigning and taking the package is Assistant Metro...

The Ledger-Enquirer will require nearly half of its employees to take a week off without pay beginning Sept. 6, said Valerie Canepa, the newspaper’s publisher, on Wednesday. The mandatory furloughs impact 88 of 174 employees — including the newsroom — and will run through Dec. 12. Exempt are advertising sales employees, most production workers and the staff of The Bayonet, a publication that focuses on Fort Benning. The furloughs come with the newspaper industry nationwide under financial pressure from the severe recession and print readers migrating to the Web for news. “We have an excellent newspaper and a building full...

More than $10bn in advertising disappeared from US media markets in the first six months of this year, according to new data that show intense pressure on media owners and ad agencies as they search for other business models. Preliminary figures from Nielsen show a 15.4 per cent year-on-year decline in US advertising revenues, the largest drop for any period in the decade since the marketing and media measurement group began compiling such reports. The study showed sharp differences in the behaviour of different media and product categories, with cable television the only medium on which ad spend increased, up...

It's enough to turn your stomach. Or, if you're a New Yorker who lived through the September 11th attacks, give you a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. A new ad purportedly for the World Wildlife Fund features dozens of airplanes converging on lower Manhattan -- featuring the Twin Towers -- with the line "The Tsunami Killed 100 Times More People Than 9/11." The ad was first brought to our attention by Gothamist, but was originally picked up by Adweek.com's AdFreak blog, which reports that the ad is from the Brazilian arm of the WWF. Sure, the 2004 tsunami was a...

For three days, I couldn't find my fire on TV. And that's a problem -- before and after -- you've been evacuated from your La Crescenta home as I, my husband and my three children were in the early morning hours this weekend. As a television critic, I have spent hours watching endless news loops of Octomom coverage, Tim Russert memorials and the Sarah Palin watch. Less than two months ago, I sat through at least an hour's worth of overhead shots of a freeway emptied in anticipation of Michael Jackson's memorial procession. An hour. Of empty freeway. I have...

A Web site for local news hopes to fill the growing void in professionally reported local news by recruiting citizens armed with iPhones as reporters. The site, Fwix, will release an iPhone application this week that enables its users to file news updates, photos and videos, live from the field. The items will appear on Fwix’s year-old Web site, which also collects links to local news articles from newspapers and blogs in 85 cities. “We believe we are the real-time local newswire,” said Darian Shirazi, Fwix’s 22-year-old founder. Many local news Web sites are sprouting up, relying on sources like...

Freedom Communications Inc., the owner of the Orange County Register, is expected to declare bankruptcy this week, according to people familiar with the situation, the latest in a string of Chapter 11 filings in the battered newspaper business. The company, majority owned for more than 70 years by the Hoiles family, has reached agreements with its lenders to restructure its debts, according to these people. With annual revenue of about $700 million, Freedom owns the Register and more than 30 other daily papers and eight TV stations. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization -- a popular measurement for leveraged...

Broadcast TV ad revenues were down 12.8% in the second quarter vs, the same qurter in 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMR data released by the Television Bureau of Advertising. Local broadcast TV revenues (spot TV) were down 26.3% to $2.7 billion, while network TV was down 6.9% $5.86 billion, and syndication was down 1.5% $1.09 billion. For the first half, spot TV was down 27%, network 5.8% and syndication only .7%. Leading the spot TV slump was automotive, which was down 54.5%, with dealership advertising down 43.6%. In fact 24 of the top 25 ad categories all showed reduced...

VIDEO: The ad was produced by the League of American Voters, a national, nonprofit group that advocates for accountability by elected officials.

The entire business news staff at The Journal News in Westchester County, New York, a Gannett newspaper, is gone this week in the round of 50 cutbacks at the paper. These include business editor Mike Bieger and reporters Julie Moran Alterio, Jerry Gleeson and Jay Loomis. The former business editor, who was most recently data desk editor, Frank Brill, was also laid off. Brill is a former board member of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. The move calls into question whether eliminating coverage of business news in the worst recession in two decades is a good idea....

Newspapers' financial woes worsened in the second quarter as advertising sales shrank by 29 percent, leaving publishers with $2.8 billion less revenue than they had at the same time last year. It's the deepest downturn yet during a three-year free fall in advertising revenue — newspapers' main source of income. The magnitude of the industry's advertising losses have intensified in each of the last 12 quarters. The numbers released Thursday by the Newspaper Association of America weren't a shock, given the dramatic erosion mirrored the advertising losses that the largest U.S. newspaper publishers already had reported for the April-June period....

Carl T. Hall, the local representative for the Media Workers Guild, told SF Weekly this morning that he has been informed by San Francisco Chronicle management that another round of layoffs is in the works. "We're anticipating some discussions," he said. "And it's not good news. But that's all I know." When asked how many layoffs were possible, Hall noted "Obviously that's the question everyone wants to know." He also added that no reason was given for the paper's announcement other than "what one might infer: I guess it's a continuing problem of getting costs in line with revenues given...

Here is video of CNBC's Jim Cramer saying yesterday that he believes advertisers will return to the Glenn Beck Show in due time. Cramer said Beck is "a nice guy," and he believes "in the end they all come back." He told investors they "should not be selling NewsCorp," the parent company of Fox News, on the rumors that sponsors have left Beck. . . . . (Watch Video)

The ABC television network is at it again. This time they're refusing to air an AD from the League of American Voters regarding Health care. The AD, which as put together by former Clinton advisor, Dick Morris has been running on local stations around the country, but when media buyers attempted to place the AD on ABC, the network refused the buy and the much needed revenue. The AD features a Neurosurgeon, Dr. Mark J. Cuffe, who runs down a litany of reasons why the current bills sitting in the House and Senate are not good for health care in...

I just spoke with a personal assistant to Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint Nextel regarding the controversy surrounding Glenn Beck. The gentlemen said that the AP was mistaken in reporting that Sprint had pulled their ads from the Glenn Beck show. The marketing team at Sprint discussed this issue earlier this morning and sent out notice to the rest of Sprint corporate headquarters that no decision had been made regarding ads on Glenn Beck. The assistant couldn't tell me whether or not Sprint was considering pulling their ads or not. I explained to him that I am a premier Sprint...

Slate is retiring “Today’s Papers,” one of the original aggregators of the Web, 12 years after it started its beloved once-a-day summary of the nation’s news pages. In its place comes a new recap of the news, one that acknowledges that the news cycle has, well, sped up quite considerably since “Today’s Papers” started in 1997. That is why the “Slatest,” the name of the new feature that comes online Monday morning, will collect the world’s news three times a day. David Plotz, editor of the online magazine Slate, very superlatively calls it a “very fast, very intelligent, very witty...

As The Times' Dawn C. Chmielewski reported Friday, emissaries of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. recently approached the owners of this newspaper, the New York Times, the Washington Post and Hearst Corp. about joining a consortium that would charge for online news content. Murdoch's Wall Street Journal already does so, but the Australian-born media magnate understands that what's required for serious -- which is to say expensive-to-produce -- journalism to survive is that all the quality English-language papers and news sites agree to charge for Web access and then mercilessly sue anyone who makes more than fair use of their work...

Inflation-adjusted numbers show papers are even worse off than you think Martin Peers had a smart Heard on the Street in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal on the critical question of how much of the recent plunge in media companies’ fortunes has been a cyclical decline versus a secular one. It’s obviously some of both, but the mix will decide what the next five years look like for magazines and newspapers, the critical providers of original reporting in the country. Alas, I’ve crunched some numbers on the industry and they’re beyond ugly. First, some definitions. A cyclical decline is one due...

With annual revenue of more than $2 billion, the Reader’s Digest Association may be the largest magazine publisher to ever file for bankruptcy. But it probably won’t be the last this year. The private-equity frenzy of the past decade, combined with the unprecedented downturn, has caught up with the industry. So far in recent months, supplier companies including distributor Source Interlink and printer Quebecor World filed for protection, and publishers including the newspaper giant (and owner of Connecticut magazine) Journal Register Co. and Cygnus Business Media have as well. Summit Business Media is said to be in the process of...

The economic storm may be passing. Is the rain letting up? For traditional media, probably not. The disruptive impact of digital technology, particularly the Internet, is likely to leave a lasting impact even as advertisers and consumers boost their spending again. But at least companies may soon get a sense of how much of the slump in ad spending and DVD sales was cyclical and how much was a permanent shift. Habits may change in all kinds of ways. Media executives from Time Warner, Walt Disney and Viacom each noted on recent earnings conference calls that television advertisers are buying...

No Loop-Hole in Federal Law to Waive Evidentiary Burdon It is the responsibility of the Direct Broadcast Satellite DBS stations to verify candidate qualifications which during the 2008 election cycle did not happen. Title 47 Code of Federal Regulations Section 73.1940 Legally qualified candidates for public office Eastern District of California Case No. 1:08-CV-01538 presented to the District Court in October 2008. Within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. §2674 San Francisco, California August 19, 2009 Direct Broadcast Satellite DBS license holders Direct TV and Dish Network are by federal law obligated to inform the public of the true identity of...

Dan Rather is wrong. Barack Obama should stay out of it. We don't need no stinkin' presidential commission. It's not that the former CBS anchor has delivered a flawed diagnosis. The news business, as Rather wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, is in deep trouble, particularly the print side. But his prescription -- that only high-level White House involvement can draw sufficient attention to the media's plight -- badly misses the mark. This president may be able to bring Henry Louis Gates and James Crowley together for a beer. Obama might even figure out how to get Congress to cough...

Twitter's effectiveness as a marketing tool is still up for debate -- but don't tell that to Homer Simpson or Jay Leno. Along with dozens of other TV characters and personalities on a variety of networks, their shows are being actively promoted on the short-form chat network, part of a drive by the major broadcasters to generate awareness and buzz for their new fall schedules. According to network execs, word of mouth is the second most-effective driver of program sampling (the first is the on-air promotional spot). So, this year, they've stepped up their use of online advertising, grassroots events,...

Sam Zell's days as a media titan in Chicago are nearly over. The motorcycle-riding billionaire, renowned for his deft touch with real estate and corporate turnarounds, took Tribune Co. private in late 2007 promising to energize the lumbering company. He piled on debt at exactly the wrong time, and a collapse in advertising for traditional media forced him to take the company to Chapter 11 bankruptcy. » Click to enlarge image Tribune Co. Chairman and CEO Sam Zell (AP) Eight months after the filing, two sources familiar with the process said creditors are working on a reorganization plan that elbows...

This is Part 1 of a series. Journalists are pretty good at working the scene of a disaster. They’ll tell you what happened, who did it, and why. But when it comes to the disaster engulfing their own profession, their analysis is less rigorous. An uncharacteristic haze characterizes a lot of the reporting and commentary on the current crisis of the industry. It could have been brought on by delicacy, perhaps romanticism. And since it is not just any crisis, but a definitive one—one that seems to mean an end to the physical papers’ role in American life as we...

The San Diego Union-Tribune has laid off about 200 of its employees, a source tells us. The mass layoffs come four months after private equity firm Platinum Equity—which is also reportedly trying to buy the Boston Globe—purchased the paper. Under Platinum Equity’s ownership, the paper had already laid off 192 employees in May, meaning it will have now eliminated a staggering 40 percent of staff since it took over. The paper will now have about 650 employees. Union-Tribune management is confirming that there were in fact new job cuts but is not saying how many. The company is also announcing...

Series: AP's online strategy In a break with tradition, The Associated Press plans to prevent members and customers from publishing some AP content on their websites. Instead, those news organizations would link to the content on a central AP website — a move that could upend the consortium’s traditional notions of syndication. That’s one revelation from a document we obtained (labeled “AP CONFIDENTIAL — NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION”) that offers new insight into how the AP is planning to reinvent itself on the Internet. The seven-page briefing, entitled “Protect, Point, Pay — An Associated Press Plan for Reclaiming News Content Online,”...

I hate Vanities - but is this true? Did Beck really lose Geico, Men's Warehouse, etc? I thought he had a popular show - it would surprise me if it were true...

Three companies who had run ads during Glenn Beck's Fox News show have distanced themselves from Beck, including LexisNexis-owned Lawyers.com, Procter & Gamble and Progressive Insurance. We're told a P&G spot inadvertently aired during a weekend Beck broadcast, but that the company never had a regular buy for the show.[snip] .....[snip]A Fox News spokesperson told TVNewser that the advertisers simply moved their spots from Beck to other programs on the network, "so there has been no revenue lost."

Glenn Beck with fox news is feeling the heat of the black blogger community that teamed up to send over 100,000 complaints to his bosses about his out of control highly polarizing language recently. During an August 4 appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Beck called President Barack Obama a “racist” with “a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.” This all happened the week of Harvard Professor Henry Gates being arrested. and birthers claiming existence of Obama Kenyan birth certificate. Is this an attack on free speech , well not really because he can still say what he...

The E.W. Scripps Co.'s second-quarter television revenue showed little sign of improvement -- but reported a profit versus a first-quarter loss. Company results showed a 24% decline in revenue to $61.1 million, coming from lower local spot and national spot revenue -- a 26% drop to $37.3 million, and a 29% fall to $16.9 million, respectively. Political advertising sank to $333,000 from $1.6 million in the comparable 2008 period. As has been the case for many TV station groups, these lower numbers were attributed to less advertising in automotive, financial services, and retail categories. More positive results came from a...

You don't have to care about media companies or reporters to care about the state of the news, because if it's in trouble -- and it surely is -- this country is in trouble. That's why, while speaking recently at the Aspen Institute, I called upon President Obama to form a commission to address the perilous state of America's news media. Some might scoff at the notion that a president and a country occupied by two wars and a recession should add the woes of the news media to an already crowded plate. But the way the news is delivered,...

There was a time, not long ago, when on-air contributors with expertise on a particular topic would command lucrative contracts from networks, sometimes earning as much as $5,000 for one appearance on a network morning show. But the financial contraction has choked off many of these deals. Now, networks pony up very little or, in most cases, nothing at all for talking heads. “It's a legitimate sign of the times,” says Hayden Meyer, who runs the alternative television department at APA. And in today's cacophonous media universe, where airtime on a national program like NBC's Today or ABC's Good Morning...

Broadcast network television upfront buying for the 2009-10 season is expected to wrap up this week with the five major broadcast networks taking in about $7.2 billion in prime-time ad revenue, down 22 percent from last year’s $9.25 billion. While the troubled economy played a role in the decline of upfront revenue, with some advertiser budgets lower than last year, and negotiated pricing for ad units down -1 to -7 percent compared to last year, the biggest reason for the disparity was that the networks decided to hold back significantly more ad inventory, planning to sell it during the season...

On a recent trip into Philadelphia, after I exited the Interstate and coasted to a stop at the first traffic light, a man walked up to my car. He wore a black apron with a change pouch and held aloft a copy of The Philadelphia Daily News, the city’s tart, irreverent tabloid. It gave me a warm feeling. Of course it did! I’m a newspaper guy. I worked as a reporter for The Daily News in the 1980s, and later for what we called “big sister,” the sober, broadsheet Philadelphia Inquirer. Even in better times, I would have been happy...

CBS Corp. saw its profit all but wiped out in the second quarter, The New York media company relies heavily on advertising, especially at its broadcast-TV network. Television ad revenue fall 13% in the quarter, to $1.15 billion, from a year earlier, even though CBS has been the only one of the four biggest U.S. TV networks to increase its prime-time audience this season. CBS's TV shows, like crime-solving series "The Mentalist," perform well even as reruns, averaging 10.1 million viewers in prime-time this season through Aug. 2, according to Nielsen Co. That's a 9.1% increase from a year earlier....