Here & there
Nickelodeon Magazine shutting down
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Jun 5, 2009 - 1:03:14 AM

Nickelodeon Magazine becomes latest print casualty
Viacom is switching off Nickelodeon Magazine, just the latest publication to be felled by a brutal print advertising environment. The company said yesterday that the magazine will be shuttered by year’s end, along with sister publication Nick Jr., after ad pages slid 27 percent during 2008, to 230, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. Nickelodeon had a rate base of 950,000 and was aimed at the TV network’s core audience, kids 6-14. It included features on the cable channel’s most popular shows, including “iCarly,” and was published by Nickelodeon Magazine Group. Though some staff will remain temporarily to put out the last issues, all 30 Nickelodeon employees are expected to lose their jobs. Hundreds of other magazines have also shut down this year in the face of plummeting ad pages. The PIB said that consumer magazine ad pages declined 26 percent year-to-year during first quarter.

Publicis: Much of GM’s debt is from media buys
According to the bankruptcy papers filed by General Motors earlier this week, the automaker owes Starcom Mediavest some $121 million, making the agency GM’s sixth-biggest creditor. But hold up just a minute, says parent company Publicis, which is itself owed $25 million from GM. The agency may not take as big a hit as it may seem. A lot of that money is for media buys that GM has not paid yet, Publicis said. “Our agencies can only be held liable for payment of the invoices when acting in that capacity to the extent that they have been paid by GM,” said the statement. Publicis said that GM, which launched a new media campaign this week designed to reassure customers that despite the bankruptcy filing it had not disappeared, intends to work with its agency through the filing and beyond.

NBC leads TCA nominations with 11
NBC may be fourth in terms of ratings, but it’s tops in the eyes of critics. The network earned 11 Television Critics Association Awards nominations yesterday, the most of any network, including three for “30 Rock” and two each for “The Office” and “Saturday Night Live.” HBO was the second-most-nominated network with six nods. Nominated for program of the year are Sci Fi’s “Battlestar Galactica,” ABC’s “Lost,” “AMC’s “Mad Men,” NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” and FX’s “The Shield.” Up for outstanding new program are Fox’s “Fringe,” CBS’s “The Mentalist,” HBO’s “No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” and “True Blood” and Showtime’s “United States of Tara.” FX’s “The Shield” was the most-nominated show, bringing in four nominations, including one for the Heritage Award, for shows that have made a lasting cultural impact. The winners will be announced on Aug. 1 in Pasadena, Calif., in a ceremony hosted by Chelsea Handler.

Quoted: Ex-LAT editor Carroll calls Zell ‘an idiot’
It’s amazing how much freer your tongue becomes when your paycheck isn’t being signed by a big company. John Carroll, the former Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun editor who quit rather than carry out newsroom cuts demanded by Tribune Co. in 2005, let loose on the company’s new owner, Sam Zell, in an interview with the Maryland Daily Record, a statewide legal and business publication. “Zell may be a genius in other lines of work, but he is an idiot in terms of journalism,” Carroll said. Since Zell bought the company in late 2007, it has instituted even deeper cuts at newspapers across the country, instituted redesigns that met with mixed results, and filed for bankruptcy. Carroll wasn’t the only one to criticize the Tribune in the article. Ex-Sun publisher Michael E. Waller told the Record, “Tribune management confuses innovation with idiocy. I could wear my underwear over my trousers and Tribune would think that’s innovation. Everybody else would think I was wacko.”



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