By Kyle Austin
By Kyle Austin
I have to admit I’ve been having fun with some contacts at the Wall Street Journal over “First Signs that Rupert is running the WSJ.” A few months back I was at the Wall Street Journal offices in New York with a client. While waiting, we were more then slightly amused that the one television in the lobby was already tuned to Fox News. In taking a lighthearted poke at the journalist we were briefing with, we brought it up.
Although she played it off as being jokingly outraged that they were airing Fox News, she was actually a bit mystified that they had already made the change from CNBC. However, she was pleasantly surprised that they had already started getting shipments of new furniture for the upstairs lobby – Only a month after the boards of the Dow Jones Co. and News Corp. had voted to finalize the deal.
First sign that Rupert is running the WSJ … Beer Pong is Page 1 – I wrote to a WSJ contact in San Francisco when this story was page 1 news on August 29th. He found it equally amusing.
Joking aside…We won’t see the first signs until December. And while the debate du jour has been “will he or won’t he get rid of the paid subscription model,” Mr. Murdoch outlined a few other plans that he has in store for the WSJ in an appearance at Web 2.0 yesterday.
Dan Farber of Cnet.com points to some of those plans here, as he quotes Murdoch’s conversation with John Battelle.
- Battelle asked Murdoch how the Dow Jones acquisition was going. “I don’t know. I haven’t paid for it yet. We”ll get it sometime in December. It’s a lock,” he said. He said he wants to add more international news and major coverage of arts, fashion and culture for the Wall Street Journal.
Come December we’ll see what those first signs really are and all joking aside (again) I think readers and investors will be excited by what they see.
October 18th, 2007
By Ben Haber
By Ben
This week CNN reported that political television advertising is expected to exceed $3 billion for this year’s presidential election. Not only could this be considered a tremendous waste of money (imagine what else could be done with this money), but there is an important question of whether or not this method of advertising is as effective as it used to be.
Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report told CNN, “Chances are, just as what happened in 2006, voters will be numb after watching hundred and hundreds of ads. The sheer number of ads probably dilutes their importance. After a while, the ads just become lots of chatter and an ad will have to be really good to cut through the noise.”
First, as so many television viewers (like I do) record their favorite programs, less and less people are actually watching commercials and are instead fast-forwarding through them. The only time I actually do watch commercials is during a Red Sox or Patriots game – but they are usually the same ten commercials run over and over again. So in essence, many of these political commercials will be TiVo’d and skipped over – flushing a portion of that $3 billion down the toilet.
Second, is this the best way to win an election? Over the past four years there have been a lot of advances online (Facebook, YouTube, etc). Having a strong online presence seems to be just as important as having a commercial every thirty seconds that criticizes the opponent. I think this method proved to be unsuccessful during the Massachusetts gubernatorial race last year.
Although spending $3 billion that doesn’t belong to you could be considered fun, it seems that today’s candidates need to adapt better to the way people are using media. In 2004 when Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube were not as influential and mainstream as they are today, the presidential candidates spent $1.7 billion on television advertising. So why would they almost double this amount when less people are watching commercials and more people are online?
Perhaps a more effective example of how candidates can adapt to recent technology are the YouTube debates that recently took place. This allowed voters to submit questions for the debate through YouTube, and the actual videos were used during the debate – which created a much more interesting and unique way for voters to connect with the candidates – and cost a lot less then $3 billion.
I know that 98% of these advertisements will be recorded and skipped over on my TV. Will these commercials influence who you are voting for?
October 18th, 2007
