Collected and Edited by Rick Kaempfer
Highlights and links to the big stories in the news this week about the media. This column appears twice a week at MEDIA NOTEBOOK
The Simpsons get renewed for 20th season(Broadcasting & Cable) Fox will return to Springfield again for the 20th season of primetime animated mainstay The Simpsons. The order came as the series’ voice actors have resolved months-long salary negotiations with producer 20th Century Fox Television that had held up production. The show’s principals -- Dan Castellaneta (Homer), Julie Kavner (Marge), Nancy Cartwright (Bart), Yeardley Smith (Lisa), Hank Azaria (Moe) and Harry Shearer (Mr. Burns) -- will reportedly receive in the neighborhood of $400,000 per episode, up from $300,000-plus previously, and will remain with the show for another four years (although Fox has not indicated that it will order additional seasons). With its upcoming season, The Simpsons -- produced by Gracie Films in association with 20th -- will tie Gunsmoke as the longest-running primetime series.
Department of Justice asks Supreme Court to restore FCC fines for expletives
(Radio Online) In the 52-page brief filed by U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement on Monday, the Justice Department said the U.S. Supreme Court should restore the FCC's authority to fine broadcast outlets for airing fleeting expletives. DOJ is seeking to overturn a ruling last June by the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York. In that ruling, the appeals court found that the agency had failed to justify its "fleeting" profanity rules. The previous ruling by the lower court that said the agency's profanity findings against Fox and other broadcast networks were "arbitrary and capricious."
CLICK HERENBC Suffering It's Own Olympic Trials
(New York Post) With just two months until the Beijing Olympics, NBC is scrambling to sell out ad time for its broadcast of the Games. The Peacock network is said to be aggressively pushing advertisers and their agencies to buy spots during the Olympics as part of the "upfront" sales negotiations that started in mid-May. Ad execs estimated NBC was anywhere from $150 million to $300 million shy of its sales target.
Gina Gershon considering lawsuit versus Vanity Fair(New York Daily News) Nancy Dillon writes: "Actress Gina Gershon insists she is not 'that woman.' The "Showgirls" star and her pit bull lawyers are going after Vanity Fair for insinuating she and ex-President Bill Clinton have been carrying on a torrid love affair as part of Clinton's bi-coastal shenanigans with bad-boy bachelors Steve Bing and Ron Burkle. Vanity Fair scribe Todd Purdum attributed the rumored romance to "high-end Hollywood dinner-party gossip" in his story "The Comeback Id." Still, Gershon, 45, wants the world to know that she has only been in the same room with Clinton on three occasions, and the meetings always took place in the presence of at least a dozen chaperones."
Vanity Fair publishing history of the internet
(Tech Crunch) Michael Arrington writes: "They say that history is written by the victorious…which begs the question as to how Al Gore and Friendster manage to get center stage in a history of the Internet. Vanity Fair writes a rambling eight-part 22 page story on history of the Internet called “How The Web Was Won” for its latest edition. The article pays tribute to Internet pioneers, including Al Gore, as well as some of the companies that have defined the commercial Internet (Amazon, Ebay, PayPal, Ning, MySpace, Friendster, YouTube). It’s going to be fairly easy to nitpick the list of companies included in the photo slideshow. No Google, for example. No Firefox, Yahoo or Microsoft. Nary a word on Facebook. Or any non-U.S. companies for that matter."
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Landecker's 70s show #1 in the ratings
(Chicago Sun-Times) Robert Feder writes (last item): "With the addition of WCDG-FM in Virginia Beach, Va., Chicago radio legend John Records Landecker is up to 55 affiliates for "Into the '70s," his syndicated oldies showcase. Airing here from 7 p.m. to midnight Sundays on Citadel Broadcasting WZZN-FM (94.7), Landecker's show finished first in the ratings among non-ethnic listeners between 25 and 54 in the Arbitron survey for winter."
Former Chicago reporter Larry Mendte investigated by FBI(Chicago Tribune) The Tribune staff reports: "Philadelphia television station KYW says newscaster Larry Mendte won't be on the air ''pending further investigation.'' The CBS-owned station released a statement Sunday saying it's cooperating with an investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office. This comes after Mendte's lawyer said Saturday that FBI agents approached his client Thursday and searched his home in connection with ''claims made by Alycia Lane.'' She's his former co-anchor who was fired in January. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Monday that Mendte is alleged to have opened Lane's private e-mail on many occasions over several months and the FBI is looking into whether he passed information gleaned from those e-mails to spread gossip on her to the media."
The media is upset at Scott McClellan
(Washington Post) The actual title of this piece is "McClellan, a Tad Late Correcting The Story." It seems to me, as an impartial observer, that the real reason McClellan is getting ripped by the press is because he calls them out for not being aggressive enough in the run-up to the war. It hurts so much because it's true, and they've had to work so hard at convincing themselves it wasn't true. Howard Kurtz writes: "In an interview three years ago, when he was waging daily warfare against the White House press corps, Scott McClellan told me: 'The media's trying to get under our skin and get us off-message.' Now it's McClellan who's gone way off-message."
CLICK HERETime Warner & GE could be the marrying kind
(Newsweek) Johnnie Roberts writes: "It's a hotly rumored corporate dalliance—that of CEOs Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner and Jeff Immelt of GE, parent of NBC Universal. No doubt their forefathers, the Warner brothers and Thomas Edison, are rolling in their graves. Back in their day, red-blooded businessmen were fighters, not lovers. Edison, who founded GE and controlled essential motion-picture patents, practically forced the Warners to pull the plug on their earliest foray into the movie business when the brothers couldn't afford to pay Edison's high fees on equipment to run their fledgling film-rental company. But times change. If Edison and the Warners couldn't afford friendly business dealings, Immelt and Bewkes may find it prohibitively costly to their careers to avoid cozying up. The two Jeffs have watched their stocks turn into, well, mutts (corny pun intended). And so they have begun preliminary efforts to explore a commingling of their entertainment assets—combining GE's NBC Universal with Time Warner—in hopes of eventually igniting investor enthusiasm and pumping up their stock prices, according to media-industry executives familiar with the developments but not authorized to comment."
Aaron Brown returns(New York Magazine) Michael Martin writes: "Low-key CNN anchor Aaron Brown was bumped aside in 2005 for Anderson Cooper. Now his CNN contract is up, and he’ll resurface next month as host of a PBS documentary series. He’s also pitching a public-radio show, appearing in an upcoming Kevin Costner movie as himself (“My worst nightmare,” he says), and teaching journalism at the University of Arizona."
Clear Channel not selling 173 stations after all
(Radio Ink) Clear Channel said in its first-quarter earnings release that it would be keeping 173 of the 448 stations it put up for sale in November 2006, as it announced its deal to go private, and in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission the company confirmed that it made that decision during Q1, "because it determined that market conditions were not advantageous to complete the sales." One hundred and forty-five of the stations on the block were classified as discontinued operations as of December 31, 2007, and in the filing Clear Channel says they have been reclassified to continuing operations as of March 31.
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Radio personality, former Elvis backup singer, dies
(Radio Ink) Hugh Jarrett, who sang bass as a member of Elvis Presley's backup quartet, the Jordanaires, has died at age 78 of injuries he sustained in a March 25 auto accident. Jarrett worked in radio in South Carolina and Tennessee -- including a stint at WKDA/Nashville -- before joining the Jordanaires in 1954, and when he left the quartet in 1958 he returned to broadcasting, as "Big Hugh Baby," at WLAC/Nashville.
Chicago Radio Spotlight Update
(Chicago Radio Spotlight) Last weekend I spoke with four radio personalities I had previously interviewed. All four have undergone big changes in their careers. Read the latest about Greg Brown (photo), Jennifer Keiper, Phil Manicki, and Cara Carriveau at the link. Coming this weekend: Java Joel Murphy.
