Every weekday in 2014, I'll be keeping an eye on what's happening in the media. My focus will be on some of my favorite subjects...the moguls, the pundits, the broadcast news biz, show business, and the publishing business. (Read "$everance" if you want a crystallization of my positions on those subjects.) And, of course, I'll also keep tabs on Chicago's media.
Chicago Media
~The WBBM Newsroom tracks down Ronald Reagan
Stumbled onto this video while working on my Just One Bad Century blog. Chicago radio geeks like me will absolutely love it...
~WGN America Drops WGN Newscast
I have friends and relatives all over the country who will be pissed about this. WGN News was their window into their former hometown.
The Moguls
~Twitter CEO Says Radical Changes On the Way
CNET has the story. It involves more private messaging and their humble goal to "reach every person on the planet." Good luck with my mom, Twitter.
The Radio Biz
~America's Favorite Radio Formats
Tom Taylor reports the latest ratings news in NOW newsletter this morning: Country is America’s top format, ranked by share of total listening. It’s actually winning by an impressive margin – a 14.8 share, compared to 11.3 for news/talk. #3 at 8.0 is what Nielsen calls “Pop contemporary hit radio.” #4 at 7.3 is AC. And #5 (at 5.5) is classic hits. That’s based on the Spring 2013 survey."
Broadcast News
~CNN Shuts Down CNN Latino
I give them points for at least trying something different--even if it didn't work out.
~Hacking in Sochi
The toilets are funny, the hacking is not. NBC News reporter Richard Engel filed a pretty disturbing report yesterday about just how quickly all of his phones and computers were hacked.
Showbiz
~Jay Leno's Last Night
The New York Times writes about his twenty year tenure. I've never been a big fan of Jay's Tonight Show, but I am a fan of his comedy (he's a great stand up), and I have met him a few times and found him to be a very nice man. Landecker and I did have that one Dancing Itos incident with him in 1995, but even in that case he called my house and came on the Landecker show to explain himself. I wish him the best in the future.
~NY Times May Give Woody Allen Opportunity To Respond
It seems only fair. From Margaret Sullivan's New York Times column about the potential New York Times op ed, and the New York Times response to the column and the op-ed. (Talk about meta)
Woody Allen has asked for, and may get, a chance to respond — in an Op-Ed piece in The Times — to a recent column and blog by Nicholas Kristof in which the filmmaker’s adopted daughter detailed her memories of his sexually abusing her.
“They asked and we said, ‘Yes, send it in,’ ” Andrew Rosenthal, The Times’s editorial page editor, told me today by phone.
It’s not certain that The Times will publish the piece. “It comes down to the editing process,” he said, something that all Op-Ed pieces are subject to. Publishing such a piece is unusual for The Times’s opinion pages.
“Normally, we don’t publish a direct response” as a full Op-Ed article, Mr. Rosenthal said, but as a smaller and less prominent letter to the editor. “In this case, it was so personal, we thought that we should.”
