NBC’s evening news program turns 60

Sixty years ago Saturday, NBC launched a regularly scheduled evening news program - then known as the NBC Television Newsreel. That evolved over time with a variety of hosts (John Cameron Swayze, David Brinkley, Chet Huntley, Roger Mudd, Tom Brokaw).

Here’s a few minutes of the June 14, 1948 broadcast - featuring “late news, pictures and film from NBC cameramen at home and abroad.”

9 comments February 15th, 2008

Did newspaper sites really have ‘banner year?’

The NAA put out a press release calling 2007 a “banner year” for newspaper sites, so WSJ blogger Carl Bailik called up Nielsen-Netratings to see if newspapers really had increased their audience share over the last year. Sure enough, from 2004 to 2007, newspapers grew their online share by 38%. But the revenue numbers tells a different story: newspaper sites had a 44.1% share of local online dollars in 2004 but just 26.9% in 2007, reports Borrell. (The big gainer, of course, is the pure plays. TV sites in 2007 had a 9.5% share.) This, folks, is the reason why newspapers have a long ways to go before they figure out a sustainable revenue/cost model going foward.

6 comments February 15th, 2008

Media companies team up on ad network

Gannett, Hearst, NY Times and Tribune announced today they’ve combined forces to create a national ad network called quadrantONE. “By aggregating the online audiences of quadrantONE’s participating media companies, large national advertisers can immediately access tens of millions of unique visitors in the country’s top markets,” Dana Hayes, Interim CEO, quadrantONE, and SVP for sales of Tribune Interactive, said in the announcement. “Each participating company has agreed to dedicate advertising inventory to quadrantONE, so the network can offer customized online campaigns on a highly competitive basis.” Hayes says quadrantONE will begin with a dedicated sales force of 17 people based in Chicago, and the network is scheduled to launch on April 1st across the members’ newspaper and TV websites (some of which are already Yahoo newspaper consortium members). All four partners in the network made undisclosed capital investments in the network. Other media partners are invited to join, but not as investors.

Add comment February 15th, 2008