Every weekday in 2014, I'll be keeping an eye on what's happening in the national media. My focus will be on some of my favorite subjects...the moguls, the pundits, the broadcast news biz, and show business. (Read "$everance" if you want a crystallization of my positions on those subjects.)
The pundits...
~Apple & Amazon downgraded for moral reasons
Wow. I'm not kidding about this headline, this actually happened on CNBC. That's right, CNBC. You have to see it to believe it. Click on the link. This is an analyst who used to work at Merrill Lynch saying this.
Show biz...
~SNL gets a black female cast member
Responding to a controversy that they were excluding black females, SNL buckles and hires one.
Broadcast news...
~The story that never dies: Is Ann Curry leaving NBC News?
The latest, according to the Wrap, is that she is staying. I'm sure there will be a story later this week that says the opposite.
~This is pretty funny. In last night's BCS game's opening moments, Brent Musberger got his own name wrong. (Full disclosure: I've done this myself. It's embarrassing.)
The Radio biz...
~Tom Taylor's column today points out something that would worry me if I were still in local radio. Pandora's CEO Mike Herring says “it’s taken us seven years” to build partnerships with the carmakers, but Pandora is now in “nine of the top ten top-selling cars in the U.S.” You can make fun of the way they self-report their listening numbers, but inside the car is one place radio always had a monopoloy. Not so much anymore.
~The radio voice of the San Diego Padres, Jerry Coleman, has died. He played on the Yankees with Joe Dimaggio, and broadcast the Padres games for forty years. His radio station in San Diego did a nice tribute to him, if you'd like to listen to it
