“We wanted to let more people take a look… so we established this channel on YouTube” - Katie Couric about her new channel on the video sharing site, which right now features a series of “Primary Questions” to some of the candidates running for president. Best line from the intro video (below): “Hello YouTube viewers. You know, it’s nice to be on YouTube for a change when I know the cameras are rolling… Harry Shearer I’m going to get you! Anyways…” Of course, she’s referring to this and this.
Slate’s Jack Shafer takes MSNBC.com, CNN.com and FoxNews.com to task for their penchant to feature fluffy headlines on the cover. He found these gems (and more) in just 48 hours:
British Teen Films Herself Trying To Kill Parents
Granny Locks Boy in Cage, Says He Poisoned Her
Baby’s body, car seat found on roadside
Girls gang-raped, forced to be sex slaves
Students expelled for making out on bus
Nuns-and-nude ad upsets Catholics
Haiti’s poor resort to eating dirt
Watch that hot drink! Airline offers naked flights
Shafer has scores of examples - and calls the sites “Web tabloids.” He notes that while there’s lots of stuff about politics and the economy - he says the reliance on tabloid stories is “explicitly designed to momentarily rouse and titillate the Web audience, says worlds about how the site thinks of us. Life is a freak show, the Web sites instruct, and we viewers just another bunch of freaks.”
Sree Sreenivasan at the South Asian Journalists Association says the use of the term “Tsuami Tuesday” is insensitive.
Some folks in the press are calling it “Tsunami Tuesday” in reference to the huge wave of major results about to come. Something in the back of my head makes me uneasy about that term, which has gained popularity only this presidential cycle, the first since the Asian/South Asian tsunami of 2004. It seems to be a term that’s in bad taste, at the very least, considering almost 300,000 people perished in that tsunami. Am I being too PC?
Next time something unexpected happens, let’s make sure not to say “political earthquake.” When the election data comes in, don’t say “a flood of returns.” If Barack Obama jumps to a big lead, don’t say “he’s on fire!” If Obama makes a mistake, don’t say “what a train wreck.” When John McCain avoids Mitt Romeny, don’t say “he avoided him like the plague.” I could go on and on - but the point is this: People aren’t saying “South Asian Tsunami Tuesday.” Yes, 300,000 people died - but lots of people die lots of ways - and we still use those terms in everyday language.
FOX and NBC video site hulu.com will be streaming all of Sunday’s Super Bowl ads according to an interesting bit from TV Week today. The commercials will be available in “high-quality streaming video” at hulu.com/superbowl after the game ends.
Do you think this means the site will go live in front of the audience for the Super Bowl? Sure would be a good time to run an ad.
Techcrunch takes WSJ.com to task for apparently locking out users when it detects more than one simultaneous login. Techcrunch says this is happening to people who use multiple computers, because you have to manually “log out” instead of just closing a browser window. Writes Erik Schonfield: “That is no way to treat your customers. In fact, it shows an utter disdain for how normal people actually use the Web. But it is an understandable, and classic, reaction. Incumbent executives always try to fend off inevitable disruption by blindly protecting their current sources of revenues. I liked Rupert Murdoch’s original idea of tearing down the entire subscription wall much better.”
CNBC.com threw together a very cool Microsoft/Yahoo deal page - with tons of video from CNBC today, stock watch (for YHOO, MSFT and GOOG) and analysis. (via ICN)
Microsoft says it would pay $44.6 billion of search engine giant Yahoo — if Yahoo takes the deal. The unsolicited bid would be worth $31 per share — 62% more than the company’s Thursday closing price. In pre-market trading, Yahoo shot up, while MSFT slumped somewhat. Microsoft made a similar attempt a year ago, but Yahoo rebuffed them because they thought their company was going in the right direction. Now, in a letter to Yahoo, Microsoft execs say “A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved.”
Update by Cory: Yahoo promises to “evaluate this proposal carefully and promptly.” The last week has been a busy one for Yahoo. CEO Jerry Yang said “profound changes” are on the way for the company, which includes 1,000 layoffs. And Yahoo Chairman Terry Semel resigned last night, just prior to Microsoft’s announcement. On a conference call this morning, Microsoft was asked what would happen with Yahoo’s brand if the deal went through. “We love the Yahoo brand,” said Microsoft’s Kevin Johnson. “We want to have clear integration principles and a joint leadership team of Microsoft leaders and Yahoo leaders to really work through the thoughtful process of how you land the specifics on this. We’ve got clear line of site to the synergies and the value creation we’re going to unlock.”
ClickZ does a good job boiling this all down. “The ultimate goal from Microsoft’s point of view is to morph the two firms’ search indexes and ad platforms to reduce redundancies in support systems, improve efficiency, and ramp up publisher yield and ad inventory to a potentially massive scale for advertisers.” It’s all about search, folks.
Explains Staci Kramer in PaidContent: “It is, as I just heard Andrew Ross Sorkin put it, ‘Murdoch-ian’ —an offer that you might think would be nearly impossible to refuse or to nudge higher, although folks are already hard at work looking for an extra few dollars.”
FOX and NBC video site hulu.com will be streaming all of Sunday’s Super Bowl ads according to an interesting bit from 
Microsoft says it 
