Archive for November, 2009

Playboy&;s Absurd AdvertisingOutsourcing

November 25, 2009

If a magazine can&;t sell advertising, it should probably just throw in the towel. But after losing $13 million in 2008 to be followed by losing an estimated $8 million this year, Playboy went in a &;different direction&; contracting with David Pecker&;s AMI publishing to sell ads&;and essentially outsource all business functions but editorial. Most magazines have two key revenue streams: advertising and circulation.  Playboy has both and adds a third&;licensing of the venerable Playboy name.   But apparently only the licensing part is working (and is not part of the AMI deal).  NY Post media reporter Keith Kelly says Playboy newsstand sales, which once topped 7 million copies per month, have deteriorated to a pathetic 150,000 today.  I&;ve written before about Playboy&;s incoherent content (and cookie-cutter plastic girls) which hardly makes it a compelling impulse purchase. Contracting with Pecker&;s AMI is no panacea for advertising either.  According to Keith Kelly, Pecker boasts that when Playboy&;s total circulation of 1.1 million is combined with that of AMI titles such as Flex, Men&;s Fitness and Muscle & Fitness, there will be a combined ad buy of 11 million men in the prized 18-to-35 demographic.  &;That&;s bigger than the men&;s networks of Time Warner, Jann Wenner&;s company or Hearst.&; I don&;t believe a word of it for three reasons: 1. Flex, Men&;s Fitness and Muscle & Fitness have ten million readers?! 2. A more apt display of the work AMI does selling ads can be found in Star and my old rag, The National Enquirer.  If you actually pick up a copy, they&;re very low on the quality national ads like the Sonys that Playboy has traditionally had, and high on commemorative plates and catalog crap. 3. The dirty little secret of men&;s magazines is that they&;re read by old guys like me and Kevin Bacon; the &;prized 18-to-35 demographic&; is more interested in Call of Duty than &;call of p***y&; on glossy paper stock. Soon enough, Pecker will want to take over editorial and do it cheaper with the reporters he has already.  Maybe they&;ll sell him the rest of the magazine. More likely it will go out of business.  The only thing keeping this money-losing relic of the 60&;s alive is the fear that killing it will kill Hugh Hefner.

Tags:AMI, David-Pecker, death-of-magazines, Hugh-Hefner, Kevin-Bacon, Playboy, The-National-Enquirer Posted in Men's Magazines, Playboy, Sex and Society | 1 Comment &;

Vegas Gambling GoesHollywood

November 20, 2009

I know, I know, they call it &;gaming&; rather than gambling, or more properly, losing.  As I noted after 20 years of tradeshow gambling in Las Vegas, &;Like the ice caps melting, I’ve watched the casino gaming pits where one plays blackjack shrink, with the real estate taken over by an army of slot machines for a generation of Americans who prefer to interact with screens rather than a boisterous table of degenerate gamblers.&; The slots are bright and attractive now, not just one-armed bandits spinning oranges and black bars.   At the gaming expo in Las Vegas, the new &;slots&; (that take only green money, credit cards or casino player&;s club/loser&;s club cards) offer &;high-definition animated characters and 3-D graphics, touch-screen technology and Xbox-type or similar video game features.&; Just as Hollywood now makes &;films&; stripmining our collective past, from &;Bewitched&; and &;Land of the Lost&; (Will Ferrell has fallen far from &;Anchorman&;) to, G-d help us, Mr. Potatohead,  gaming companies will bring images, characters and situations from &;The Lord of the Rings&; and, for the distaff crowd, &;Sex and the City&; to the casual slot player. A Hollywood/Vegas hook-up promoting gambling directly from couch potatoes can&;t be far away.

Tags:Hollywood, Las Vegas, slot-machines, Will-Ferrell Posted in Hollywood, Las Vegas, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;

Oprah Winfrey to End World in2011

November 20, 2009

Forget 2012.  Clearly that&;s why her talk show ends then.  Her power is awesome.

Tags:2011, 2012-The-Movie, death-of-television, media-frenzy, Oprah-Winfrey, Public Relations Posted in Television | Leave a Comment &;

Car of the YearBaby!

November 19, 2009

I couldn&;t have predicted this when I saw the Ford Fusion Hybrid at the LA Auto Show press days last year, or even when my wife and I bought the first Ford Fusion Hybrid off the Galpin Ford lot in March 2009.  But Motor Trend just recognized our &;international supercar&; as the Car of the Year. I had originally wanted to buy a Cadillac CTS when it was named the Car of the Year a couple of years ago, but its high price, questions about GM&;s survival and a feeling it wasn&;t time to celebrate success/excess with a Caddy steered me away.  Averaging over 38 miles to the gallon over 8000 miles (on regular gas) is just one reason I&;m glad we went with Ford. Although I can rarely wrest the Fusion away from my wife, who loves it, I&;m still a proud papa.

Tags:Ford, Ford-Fusion, Ford-Fusion-hybrid, MotorTrend, MotorTrend-Car-of-the-Year Posted in Automotive-industry | Leave a Comment &;

Boys Will Be 86-Year OldBoys

November 18, 2009

It got little attention even on the sports pages, but Bud Adams of the Tennessee Titans was fined $250,000 by the National Football League for his on-the-field outburst against Ralph Wilson and the Buffalo Bills. Is Bud Adams a criminal cornerback or gay-baiting running back? No, Adams is the owner of the Titans.  He got the fine for flipping the bird at Buffalo Bills fans, players and fellow owner and WWII veteran Ralph Wilson, 91, after the Titans defeated the Bills 41-17 in a Toilet Bowl match up of 3-6 teams going nowhere. You can see this low point on video here. Adams, who is both an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation and a U.S Navy veteran, should know better.  But hey&;why own a football team if you can&;t tell your rivals to fuck off?

Tags:Bud-Adams, NFL, obscene-gestures, Ralph-Wilson, Tennessee-Titans Posted in Sports, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;

Ruth Seymour Retiring fromKCRW

November 18, 2009

The ageless doyenne of ever politically-correct KCRW-FM is stepping down. (Even the LA Times can&;t find or won&;t dare print her age.) And somewhere Sandra Tsing Loh is singing &;Ding dong the witch is dead.&;

Tags:KCRW.ORG, Ruth-Seymour, Sandra-Tsing-Lo Posted in KCRW-FM, political-correctness | Leave a Comment &;

Magazine Death List from AdAge

November 10, 2009

Ad Age recently updated its magazine death list, and from the point of view of a reader, freelance writer and technologist, it&;s pretty sobering.  As a continuing trend, it&;s not a surprise, but the casualties are adding up, as Gourmet joins Vibe, PC Magazine, (which once sent my old publication, PC LapTop, a threatening letter for putting &;PC&; in a red box on the cover) Portfolio, Blender, Electronic Gaming, even Nickelodeon&;which I subscribed to for my son. Doesn&;t anyone read anymore?  Or at least look at the pretty pictures? I used to envy people like Rich Stengel, who I knew a little at Princeton, with high-powered publishing careers.  This is why I no longer envy Rich. I had to laugh when I saw Forbes current cover story on AT&T and Verizon quaking in their boots about free phone calls.  Meanwhile Forbes can&;t admit how scared it is about free content on the Internet, that means no one has to buy a magazine. 

Business magazines in general are dying, not just because of the economy and the &;secular decline&; of publishing and journalism, but because the hero worship of those with feet of clay has gone away.  As David Carr puts it, it&;s no longer about &;the shiny, happy people striding boldly across the pages of magazines with names like Fortune, Money, Fast Company and Wired&;nobody is going to read, let alone aspire to, magazines called Middled, Outsourced, Left Behind and Clobbered.&; For writers (and others) as my friend Cliff Roth says, as long as what you do can&;t be replaced by user-generated content (UGCX) on the Internet, you&;re golden.

Tags:Cliff-Roth, death-of-magazines, Forbes, PC-Magazine, UGX, Vibe Posted in death-of-magazines | Leave a Comment &;

ABC News Finds Ft. Hood KillerCaptivating

November 9, 2009

Doesn&;t anybody around here understand writing or usage?  I know I sound like grammarian schoolmarm, but ABC&;s story on &;alleged&; mass murderer Major Nidal Malik Hasan was even more poorly written than usual.  The first sentence reads: &;Days after a mass shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Killeen, Texas, details of the gunman&;s life have captivated millions looking for motives behind Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan&;s murderous rampage.&; Yes, captivating.  Not. To captivate means to capture attention in a positive way, as in &;Miley Cyrus captivated her tween audience.&;  Captivating=delightful. What&;s next for ABC&;s incompetent news writers?  Why not &;the antics of the terrorist murderer captivated the public&;s attention&;?

Tags:ABC, death-of-journalism, news-incompetence, Nidal-Malik-Hasan, terrorism Posted in ABC-News, copyediting | Leave a Comment &;

Las Vegas is LosAngeles

November 6, 2009

So why did I read The Movable Buffet so religiously? Because having gone there at least once a year since 1988 for the Consumer Electronics Show (and for the late, unlamented COMDEX) I&;ve come to love Las Vegas, although my wallet and sinuses could probably not handle it for more than a week at a time.  Like the ice caps melting, I&;ve watched the casino gaming pits where I play blackjack shrink, with the real estate taken over by an army of slot machines for a generation of Americans who prefer to interact with screens rather than a boisterous table of degenerate gamblers. Las Vegas was built on millions of people from Los Angeles coming to gamble in the desert, whether they stayed at the palaces on the strip or did a Las Vegas turn around, gambling all night and driving back without sleeping. (The first time I drove to Las Vegas I saw five dead bodies on the side of the I-15 from two separate accidents where the drivers fell asleep). Las Vegas and Los Angeles share a lot, including thousands of former Angelenos &;native&; Las Vegans are always begging to go home.  Meanwhile the &;What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas&; encourages tourists to treat the city as their toilet, although it contributes to some surprising local industries. Las Vegas and Los Angeles share a temperate to boiling climate and a sprawling aesthetic, but with magnificient parks just a few minutes away.  Then there&;s  In &;n Out Burger, minimalls, a love of bling and money, a sprouting of magnificent cities out of nothing, jammed freeways but troubled real estate markets, entertainment stars and wanna-bes, luxury and poverty almost side-by-side, gangbangers and pointless violent crime killing the best of our youth (here here, there there), insane people, and both Bugsy Siegel and O.J. Simpson!

   Las Vegas holds up a mirror to Los Angeles.  But it&;s not a funhouse mirror anymore.

Tags:CES, COMDEX, gambling, Las Vegas, Los-Angeles, Movable-Buffet, O.J.-Simpson Posted in Las Vegas, Los-Angeles, Uncategorized | 1 Comment &;

LA Times Kills Las VegasBlog

November 5, 2009

Another day, another bad decision at the Los Angeles Times, this time killing their Las Vegas entertainment blog, A Movable Buffet, the only LA Times blog I read every day. Las Vegas entertainment journalist Richard Abowitz had contributed his informed, well-written observations on the likes of Perez Hilton, Paris Hilton, (who he wrote was popular among Las Vegas club workers because she brought the crowds),  Playmate Holly Madison (below), and his bete noire, magician Criss Angel of Believe. Las Vegas was built on millions of people from Los Angeles coming to the casinos to gamble in the desert, and more recently to sample the fine dining and the many entertainment options there.  Historically this has been a huge source of advertising to the Times as well, with many pages in the Travel and Entertainment sections.  There&;s also a major crossover with the Hollywood lamp the Times is trying to steer its sinking ship by. Obviously, the paper couldn&;t find a way to monetize The Buffet, so the handful of dollars the Times paid Abowitz and his photographer, Sarah Gerke, were seen as a cuttable expense item.  Especially on the Internet, a newspaper won&;t grow by cutting off its fingers and toes.

Tags:A-Movable-Buffet, Criss-Angel, death-of-newspapers, Holly-Madison, Las Vegas, Los-Angeles-Times, Paris-Hilton, Perez-Hilton Posted in death-of-newspapers, Los-Angeles-Times | 2 Comments &;