Month: May 2007

American Idol it’s not…

…but a Mayo Clinic physician, Janet Vittone, M.D., has been named one of five finalists in an ABCNewsNow.com/Prevention magazine contest called “Picture of Health” for women over age 40 who have overcome an illness or otherwise inspired members of their community to make healthy choices. See the ABCNewsNow interview here.

Voting is on-line, and as of this moment there have been a total of 1,978 votes cast, which is probably about 8 seconds worth of voting in American Idol.

Dr. Vittone had previously been featured on Mayo Clinic’s web site. The Rochester Post-Bulletin also did a story today on the contest and her participation.
This contest demonstrates several trends shaping media:

User-generated content, as each contestant uploaded a one-minute video during the first two months of 2007. Reportedly several hundred women entered or were entered by their loved ones. All of that content was free to ABC and to Prevention, and they used it to sell advertising.

Audience involvement, with people voting for their favorites. This is a little different from other contests like American Idol, because in essence you have five women who have either beaten a disease or engaged a community in health behaviors. There’s no Sanjaya in the bunch. Which saintly woman do you choose?

Partnerships for cross-promotion. Prevention and ABCNewsNow.com are building traffic and interest for each other, and with the announcement of finalists on Good Morning America, they got a nice additional cross-promotion.

Lots of web video that wouldn’t make air. When you go to the contest site you have options to see at least three videos of each contestant (each of which has a SlimFast ad). The whole Good Morning America introduction segment was about three minutes. But because you don’t need to appeal to a mass audience on the web, you can provide more in-depth video for those who are interested. (I would suggest, though, that ABC might want to reconsider whether playing the same ad before each video is a good idea. I would watch more of them if I didn’t have to see the “Hippy Hippy Shake” ad for a full 30 seconds each time. I likely would be more favorably disposed toward the advertiser, too, if every one-minute video wasn’t preceded by a 30-second ad.)

It will be interesting to follow this and see how many people are participating.

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Star Tribulation

The Star Tribune of the Twin Cities today announced its second round of layoffs this year (the first was in March).

Bowing to the pressures of declining circulation and falling revenue, the Star Tribune Monday announced a sweeping program of buyouts across the company that will send 145 employees out the door, either through buyouts or, if enough people don’t volunteer, layoffs.
The cuts represent 7 percent of the company’s 2,100 positions and include 50 positions out of 383 people in the newsroom and editorial departments.

Publisher Par Ridder delivered the news in a company-wide meeting in which he laid out the increasingly bleak fortunes for daily metro newspapers. The company’s annual advertising and circulation revenue has fallen by $64 million over the last three years. Classified advertising was down 23 percent in the first quarter over last year. If current trends continue, Ridder said, the paper would begin to lose money in a year to 18 months.

The full article goes into considerable detail on the financial problems facing the paper, which was sold late last year for less than half of what McClatchy had paid for it.

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Video in a whole new (Silver)Light

TechCrunch has a really interesting review of Microsoft’s new multimedia presentation and services software, Silverlight. I installed Silverlight on my Mac with no problem, and the demos show that this is going to be able to do a lot of neat things. For one thing, it might challenge the ubiquity of Flash. The video quality in the Fantastic Four movie trailer is stunning.

It tells me Web 2.0 might be moving to 2.2 or so, and that standards for web video may be moving up.

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Same Song, Same Verse

Circulation numbers continue to get worse.

Newspaper sales continue a steep slide nationally, figures released Monday show, but two New York City tabloids continued to buck the trend, posting the largest gains among major papers.

The industry as a whole reported a 2.1 percent drop in weekday circulation, and 3.1 percent on Sundays, in the six months ended March 31, compared with the period a year earlier. The figures, compiled by the Audit Bureau of Circulations but not yet audited, reflect 745 of the nation’s more than 1,400 daily newspapers.

The figures follow first-quarter reports for the nation’s major newspaper companies that showed falling earnings, declines in advertising and plans for continued staff cuts, heightening fears about the future of newspapers. Circulation figures have dropped gradually for two decades, beginning in the 1980s, but since 2004, the decline has picked up speed as readers and advertisers have migrated to the Internet.

It’s interesting that the Times places itself among those that “held fairly steady”…even though the other two in the group had slight gains while the Times’ decline was slightly worse than the industry average on Sundays, and modestly better than average on weekdays.

Sales have held fairly steady in recent years at the nation’s three largest-circulation newspapers, USA Today (more than 2.2 million), The Wall Street Journal (more than 2 million) and The New York Times (more than 1.1 million). In the most recent period, USA Today and The Journal, which do not print Sunday issues, posted fractional gains, while The Times’s circulation dropped 1.9 percent on weekdays and 3.4 percent on Sundays.

The Los Angeles Times, roiled by internal dissension, leadership turnover and a recent deal by its owner, the Tribune Company, to take the company private, lost 4.2 percent of its weekday sales, and 4.7 percent on Sundays. The Times’s weekday circulation averaged 815,000, almost 300,000 below where it stood seven years earlier.

I guess compared to the LA Times, the NY Times can take some comfort.

Or, as a famous Minnesotan would sing, “The Times, they are a changin'”

My wireless router burned out last week, and I’m just now back on-line at home, so I’m a few days late with this one. Happy to be back.

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