Cable news channels are famous for their countdown clocks. Ticking down the time until debates… elections… MSNBC even had a clock counting down to the start of the OJ hearing today.
Inside Cable News notes that CNN is now using a clock on some of its commercial breaks… letting you know precisely how much time until the clutter ends, and the content begins. This is likely due to the new commercial ratings - and is a very different way to try and discourage commercial skipping. Click here for a screen grab.
Before I forget, be sure to check out cumul.us (which I will write more about later), a social weather site that aggregates people’s predictions about the weather. Best tag line ever: The Wisdom of the Clouds.
Rupert Murdoch and Peter Chernin said they’re hard at work on new revenue generators for MySpace, including a self-service ad system geared toward small businesses and aggressive plans to hire new direct sales staff. They also defended accusations that Facebook is outpacing MySpace in growth with stats that show MySpace is growing 300,000 users (globally) every day compared to Facebook’s 250,000.
I don’t usually express straightforward opinions here (I usually leave that to Safran), but Facebook is out-innovating MySpace. Period. And Facebook’s dedication to the user — instead of the almighty dollar, like MySpace — will pay them dividends in the long run.
Actor Steve Carrell has refused to cross the picket lines, so production has stopped on The Office. And writers and cast posted a YouTube clip (below) that pokes fun at the studio. “We’re supposed to get paid 11 cents for every 200 trillion downloads (on iTunes),” jokes Greg Daniels, showrunner for The Office. On a serious note, Daniels goes on to explain that the staff wrote webisodes — which won a daytime Emmy — and “they apparently won’t even pony up the 28 bucks or so it costs to buy an actual Emmy.”
By the way, LATimes.com has a grid illustrating which shows are going into repeats.
Scott Libin is moving from sunny St. Petersburg to the Twin Cities to become news director of WCCO. Libin has been the managing director of Poynter Online, and a few years ago he was news director at WCCO-rival KSTP.
