The first debates for the next presidential election are three and a half months away. That’s right. CNN has announced it’s teaming up with New Hampshire ABC affiliate WMUR and the Union Leader newspaper for the debates on April 4 and 5. WMUR is the longtime home of the early debates, but this is the earliest debate session ever held in a presidential election. Some of the candidates may not have even announced by then.
January 13th, 2007
It was porn that decided the VHS - Betamax war. Adult content drove VCR adoption. It drives Video-On-Demand and internet downloading. And it could be porn that decides the hi-def DVD war. That “other” Vegas convention last week, The Adult Entertainment Expo, was featured in an interesting interview on CNBC. Vivid Entertainment Steven Hirsch Co-Chair says that, while Sony Blu-Ray is the better technology, Sony is not cooperating with the adult film industry. On putting out its first adult title on Blu-Ray, Hirsch said “It was difficult and (Sony) tried to block us.” Hirsch says porn may go to HD-DVD by default if there isn’t more cooperation from Sony. Does this sound familiar? It would be remarkable if the adult industry again decided a format war being staged by Sony. Could the same mistakes really happen again?
January 13th, 2007

Get ready for a massive ad branding campaign starting Monday, when AT&T starts letting people know that it’s phasing out the Cingular brand name. (And right after the great PR Cingular got from the iPhone announcement, too.) AT&T became the sole owner of Cingular when it bought BellSouth in 2006. This brings things full circle: Cingular extinguished the old AT&T Wireless name in 2004. Anyone have a scorecard? I’ve lost track of all these cellphone company brands.
January 13th, 2007