Slower ad growth
for social networks
Other shorts: NYT yanks doctored photos from web site
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Jul 9, 2009
Forecast: Smaller ad growth for social networks
Things are not good at MySpace, where a leadership shakeup earlier this year led to huge layoffs over the past month. Meanwhile, Facebook passed the News Corp. property to become the most-used social networking site in the U.S. No wonder, then, that eMarketer is predicting that advertising on MySpace will decline 15 percent this year to $495 million, making a big impact on the social networking category as a whole, where MySpace accounts for more than a third of all advertising. In a report to be released today, eMarketer slashes its earlier prediction of 10.2 percent growth for social networking sites this year, forecasting that ad revenue will increase a mere 3 percent, to $1.1 billion. That’s despite continued growth from Facebook, which is on pace for a 9 percent advertising increase this year, to $230 million. If MySpace continues to fall and Facebook rises, the latter will outdraw the former by 2011.
NYT yanks doctored photographs from web site
The question isn’t so much did a photographer alter pictures for a New York Times Sunday Magazine piece on housing construction abandoned in the wake of the recession—the evidence is pretty damning—but why did he do it. The Times web site has removed the photo gallery in question, and the paper ran an editor’s note in today’s edition admitting to the overzealous Photoshopping, which was first pointed out by a reader on Metafilter.com, a community blog. “Editors later confronted the photographer and determined that most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show,” reads the Times note. The alterations are more than a bit puzzling. A note ran with the feature stating that Edgar Martins, the photographer in question, “creates his images with long exposures but without digital manipulation.” Why Martins would thus manipulate the photos, after explicitly stating he did not, is not clear. PDN.com says the photos in question have, “unlikely repetitions of elements suggest[ing] that they are composites or have had some elements covered up.”
Philadelphia Metro: We’re not dead, just chilling
Finally, a bit of good news for newspapers: Metro Philadelphia didn’t actually shut down, despite appearances to the contrary. The free daily is evidently in the midst of a week-long vacation for the July 4 holiday, but it failed to inform readers of its intentions very well. That led to speculation across town that Philly was losing its second daily paper in a month, following the closure of the Philadelphia Bulletin last month. Metro stopped publishing last week, but it will return today with new issues. The temporary suspension was not due to monetary issues, claims the paper’s new owner, Seabay Capital, which acquired the paper and ones published in New York and Boston earlier this year. A notice about the publishing schedule appeared in an edition last week, but the confusion stemmed from the fact that there was no mention of it on the paper’s web site nor on company employees’ voicemail, leading people to believe that the operation had simply folded.
Programming notes: Tribune and Fox ready to ‘Rock’
“TGS with Tracy Jordan” is heading to syndication. NBC’s “30 Rock,” which stars Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin and Tracy Morgan and centers around the faux variety show “TGS,” has been picked up by Fox Television Stations and Tribune Broadcasting and will begin its off-network run in fall 2011. Comedy Central has picked up the cable rights to the comedy, and it will also begin airing the show in fall 2011. Meanwhile, in other programming, TLC will roll out the second season of “Toddlers and Tiaras” on July 22 at 10 p.m., with the first of 13 new episodes. Food Network on Aug. 7 at 10 p.m. will launch “Chefs vs. City,” in which chefs Chris Cosentino and Aaron Sanchez will tour the country and battle well-known local chefs in various cities. On Aug. 26 at 9 p.m. Bravo will premiere “Top Chef: Las Vegas,” where 17 contestants will compete for $100,000. And Fox has pushed back the second-season premiere of “Dollhouse” a week, moving it from Sept. 18 to Sept. 25 at 9 p.m. The first episode of the season will be written and directed by creator Joss Whedon.
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