Other shorts: The first iPad magazine: Conde Nast's GQ
By Louisa Ada Seltzer Mar 9, 2010
Programming notes: Miss Universe reigns on NBC
Televised beauty pageants aren’t dead yet. NBC yesterday extended its deal with the Miss Universe organization for three more years, meaning it will air the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants through at least 2013 (the new deal kicks in next year). As a part of the deal, Spanish-language Telemundo will simulcast Miss Universe. This follows last week’s news that TLC declined to renew its deal with the Miss America pageant. This year’s Miss USA airs on May 16. Meanwhile, in other programming, ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” will now air tape-delayed original episodes on Mondays and repeats on Fridays; previously it aired repeats on Mondays and live episodes Tuesday-Friday. ABC is also considering airing a “Kimmel” primetime special on the night of the “Lost” series finale, according to Broadcasting & Cable. Elsewhere in the ABC family, ABC Family has picked up the TV rights to the Tim Burton movie “Alice in Wonderland,” as well as the Sandra Bullock film “The Blind Side,” with each premiering on the network in 2012. On March 15 MTV will roll out a new season of “True Life,” its documentary series that looks at teens. On March 21 Discovery Communications will premiere its new series “Life” on seven of its networks: Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Science Channel, Investigation Discovery, Planet Green and Discovery Health. The show will air on just Discovery Channel in the weeks that follow. And A&E will premiere “Fugitive Chronicles” on April 1, which will use archived footage and interviews to tell the stories of real-life manhunts.
The first iPad magazine: Conde Nast's GQ
You might expect that one of the tech titles would be the first to debut on the iPad, Apple's highly anticipated new e-reader slated to debut April 3. But it will be an old-guard men's title, GQ, that gets that honor instead. GQ will be the first magazine available on the iPad, according to the New York Post's Keith Kelly, who says competition for that distinction was fierce within the Condé Nast family. In addition to GQ, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Glamour and of course Wired were jockeying to become the first iPad title. All five have been involved in the company's wider efforts to carve out a presence on a variety of e-readers. The iPad was hailed as a potential savior for print magazines and newspapers alike when it was unveiled last month, with publishers hit hard by the ad recession and circulation declines eager to ramp up their new media presence and find a way to monetize it. Apple began its expected iPad commercial blitz Sunday during the Oscars with the first ad for the device.
Google dishing up new web TV service
Devices that marry TV and video options may be the hot thing in technology this year. Days after TiVo introduced such a gadget, Google is reportedly partnering with Dish Network on a searchable service that will allow users to personalize a viewing schedule based on both web and television programming. The Google-Dish service will employ Google's Android wireless operating system and allow users to search both Dish programming and web sites like YouTube or Hulu to come up with a personalized schedule. Perhaps most appealing, it does not require expensive additional hardware, one hindrance to past efforts to combining web and TV content. Right now the service is in the testing phase with a number of Google employees taking part, according to the Wall Street Journal. Google's interest in this emerging technology has been spurred by hopes that it could bolster its TV ad brokering service, Google TV, which has seen slow growth.
Study: 'Idol' results differ with restricted voting
“American Idol” viewers can vote for their favorite singer as many times as they want, but would results be different if everyone had just one vote? Absolutely. That's the finding of HCD Research’s “Idol Democracy,” an online survey on its mediacurves.com web site. Last week the "Idol" field was cut from 20 to 16 as John Park, Jermaine Sellers, Michelle Delamor and Haeley Vaughn were eliminated. However, using HCD Research’s study, which gives 5,985 “Idol” viewers one vote apiece, Park and Delamor would have been safe and Todrick Hall and Paige Miles would have been eliminated. (Two males and two females are eliminated each week during the current semifinal rounds). On the ladies’ side, Miles received just 4.7 percent of the vote, followed in the bottom by Vaughn (4.8 percent) and Delamor (4.9 percent). Among the guys, Sellers received the fewest votes with 2.9 percent of the total, followed by Hall (4.3 percent), Aaron Kelly (6.1 percent) and Park (6.2 percent). Using HCD’s results, Crystal Bowersox finished on top of the female side last week, grabbing 26.8 percent of the vote, while Lee Dewyze finished as the top male with 16.5 percent of the vote. Fox declined to comment on HCD’s methodology.
Tribune outsourcing Virginia duties to Chicago
All newspaper chains are looking for ways to trim costs, and way out front is Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune and a slew of other papers. Tribune’s latest scheme is to take over much of the editing and design of one of those papers, the Daily Press of Newport News, Va., from its Chicago offices. While details of the plan are sketchy, it appears a reporter covering a school board meeting in nearby Hampton, Va., would have his story edited not by the local city editor but by someone in Chicago—someone who presumably has never been to Newport News or Hampton, Va., for that matter. The new plan, which goes into effect today, is expected to lead to a 15 percent cost savings for the Daily Press news operation. Tribune already handles a good share of the paper’s content, sending non-local stories to the Press and other Tribune papers that are ready to drop into pages, already edited and headlined.
Louisa Ada Seltzer is a staff writer for Media Life.
