GenDigital

The Aquaman Myth May Soon Become a Reality

What started out as a major plot line on HBO's hit show "Entourage," and more to the point, a running joke among Hollywood's insiders may soon evolve from fiction to fact. A story from the LA Times, has real life Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel (the inspiration for agent Ari Gold on Entourage) discussing the Aquaman project with Warner Bros. Although the studio says they are not currently developing a project for Aquaman, the reporter says conversations have been underway with DC Comics, who holds the character rights for Aquaman. DC Comics, like Warner Bros. Pictures are owned by Time Warner, which presumably, should the make the talks go a bit smoother if everyone is behind the project. Just the fact that discussions are taking place validates the HBO show's following both in and out of the Hollywood power player scene. For example, when Aquaman made a cameo on the WB show Smallville last year, it ended being the highest rated episode of the season. More recently, a previously unseen pilot episode of an Aquaman TV series showed up on iTunes and instantly became the most popular video download.

USA Today Celebrates MTV Turning 25

Guess who turns 25 next Tuesday? Believe it or not, it is MTV. USA Today produced a tidy little write up highlighting the cable net's milestones over the past 25 years from the time it launched in 1981 (Video Killed the Radio Star was the first video ever played on the net, and would probably make a good Trivial Pursuit question) through Janet's nanosecond moment of nakedness at the 2004 Super Bowl. I could spend the next week writing about all of the ways MTV has been on the forefront of youth culture over the past 25 years, and I think USA Today does a good job of highlighting stuff, so I don't have to. 

Sprite Goes Viral With Latest Effort

Sprite is running some creative over the next two weeks that will hopefully create some buzz among the teen target the beverage maker intends to reach. The ads will run on MTV and gaming network G4 as well as on the syndicated television program Soul Train Weekly. The viral program also includes a new interactive television component with a special feature housed on TiVo's Showcase section. (Only four percent of teens report owning a TiVo in their household). Those viewers that have the opportunity to views the spots in the TiVo showcase in slow motion mode will be able to see "codes" that could not be seen in normal real time playing. Users can then go ahead and enter the codes on the subLYMONal.com web site for access to free Sprite ringtone downloads and free video clips. I'm sure all of the creative is cool and the free ringtone makes sense and certainly fits, but I would have attempted to get broader distribution instead of only targeting 4% right off the bat.

K Fed Endorses Clothing Line

Yesterday it was Adidas and Scarlett Johannson making fashion news, today it is Mrs. Britney Spears, aka Kevin Federline grabbing some headlines. Perhaps not as big a deal as the Reebok/Johannson deal, but K-Fed is set to appear in a new advertising campaign from Five Star Vintage, a higher end apparel line. The campaign targets fashion conscious 16 to 28 year old men who take their fashion cues from Hollywood celebs. The line is available at Macy's, Lord & Taylor, Kitsons and even the Virgin Megastores.

Facebook To Give Away 10 million iTunes Samplers

Facebook, the number one social networking site among college students and number two social networking site among teens, has announced a new back to school promotion with Apple to give away 10 million iTunes music samplers. Starting this week, Facebook will give away 1.0 million 25-song music samplers each week for the next 10 weeks. Not bad for a college kid who just got an iPod and is trying desperately to fill it up. Facebook's deal with Apple should cement its position as the "go to" social networking spot among college students. The deal may also stimulate some teens to move away from MySpace and head over to Facebook.

Reebok and Super Hot Celeb Johannson Team Up For Love

Scarlett Johannson, currently ranked number 5 on the Youth Trends Top Ten Celebrity List, has lined up a new deal with Reebok, now an operating unit of Adidas, to create a combination retro style and fashion forward style line of sportswear and footwear dubbed "Scarlett [Hearts] Rbk." Reebok is quoted in yesterday's edition of WWD saying the deal "hits the sweet spot" of a major women's initiative the company announced back in April. The line will be targeted to young women who go to yoga or pilates class in the morning and then catch up with friends afterwords for coffee at Starbucks. Scarlett is latest Hollywood celeb to join Reebok's growing list of A listers which also include Jay Z, Lucy Liu and 50 Cent, among others. Reebok and Johansson say the target customer for the new line is an active female between the ages of 16 and 35.

Another Teen Mag Goes Away

Although they were around considerably longer and had more than twice the circulation of recently folded ElleGIRL, Time Inc yesterday decided to fold the print version of Teen People. According to the memo released, Time Inc was shutting down Teen People after the September 2006 issue, the August/September issues have been traditionally the strongest in terms of ad pages for all of the teens books. Like ElleGIRL, the memo released yesterday said Teen People will continue to have an online presence. If you've been following some of my magazine related posts over the past few months this announcement shouldn't come as much of surprise. Here were some of the factors that most likely lead to the announcement. First, as I've said before a couple of times, entertainment hungry teens are turning to books like People proper, US Weekly and In Touch to get their read on, otherwise they get their fix at one of the online entertainment sites. From a more practical standpoint, some of the more popular celebs of the moment are barely out of their teen years, think Lindsay, so it is pretty tough to land some exclusive covers when the young stars are gracing the covers of "older" mags like US Weekly, Vanity Fair or even Harper's Bizarre. Lastly, I really think TP, in terms of its content offerings kinda lost its way over the past two years. At the end of the day, it just wasn't as good as it once was four or five years back when a different editorial team was running the show. Now the question is, will it not only survive, but thrive online? My immediate answer right now is probably not, unless they want something to exist on a very small scale, probably something like under 500k uniques a month and generating less than $5.0 million in advertising annually. I don't know how appealing that can be to Time Inc in the long run.

Commentary: Will NBC's Engagement Deal With Toyota Be The First of Many To Come?

The big news last week in the world of broadcast television was NBC's announcement that it struck an ad deal with Toyota based on a new engagement metric in addition to traditional Nielsen ratings. Essentially, the car maker would end up paying more money for their commercials if the shows they bought time on had higher engagement ratings. I think this presents a new and interesting way to look at the hundreds of millions of people that watch television. The engagement metric is based on research from IAG who has a panel of 5,000 people who answer questions based on a particular show's plot line or characters. The higher number of correct responses, the higher the engagement score, sounds pretty simple and straightforward. But, here is the catch. Presumably, NBC can have a show that receives lower viewer ratings from Nielsen, but that is only half the story. Even with a smaller number of overall viewers, if the viewing audience is more "engaged" meaning their answering all of the survey questions correctly, that would give the show a much higher engagement rating and NBC could end up charging the carmaker more money than it would of done so previously, just based on Nielsen rating points. Television media buyers are always looking to get the best deals for their clients, not like any other buyer for other mediums, so they are stressing the IAG data be used in conjunction with Nielsen data. So, that begs the question, would you rather have a big audience watching a show and hopefully your commercials during breaks that has a low engagement rating or would you rather buy time on show that reaches less people but has a considerably higher engagement rating? I am of the opinion that NBC is doing something good by offering advertisers and their agencies additional ways to measure the value of their programming, I don't view this as another line of defense to retain dollars that may be shifting to the Internet or other darling of the moment communication channels. Do you want to make a bet that the other broadcast nets like ABC and CBS will offer an engagement type deal for their new fall shows? I wouldn't take that bet, it's going to happen.

Site Watch: People Readies New Look

With new entertainment hubs from major media players like CBS (TheShowbuzz.com) coming to market with greater frequency, one would expect one of the largest players in the field, People Magazine to do something big. People, the number two magazine among college women behind only Cosmopolitan, plans to re-launch the People.com site later this fall and promises a chockfull of new features and applications. Among the new features being touted include video podcasts and an archive of 30 years of content, just in case you want to see what Heather Locklear looked like when Dynasty was still on the air. The re-design will also include new, larger ad units, something that should make advertisers targeting the entertainment hungry crowd, a bit more happy. MediaBuyerPlanner reports People recently took over the majority of interactive sales responsibilities back from AOL, I'm sure after hearing lots of moaning and groaning from interactive media buyers. 

Lifetime TV Scores Rights For Grey's Anatomy

Grey's Anatomy, the number one television show among college women will soon have a new home on the Lifetime Television Network. The women's network announced yesterday it secured exclusive rights to re-air episodes of the hospital drama series beginning in January. Earlier this year, Lifetime also secured rights to air older episodes of ABC's other hit show among college women, Desperate Housewives. Those episodes will begin airing in two weeks. Apparently, Lifetime outbid other cable nets including Oxygen and TNT bidding a reportedly $1.2 million per episode. That's a lot of ad time that needs to be sold to make this deal work, but apparently the women's net feel confident it can make this work.