En Vogue or out? Si silences Wintour exit rumors.
Is American Vogue in for a change? The rumor mill has been in overdrive over the last few weeks regarding the future of Vogue editor Anna Wintour, one of magazines’ biggest celebrity editors. The New York Post’s Page Six speculated last month that Wintour, who has presided over the U.S. edition of Vogue for 20 years, was thinking about retiring rather than trudge on with the style bible in the midst of a recession. Then yesterday, Gawker reported that Condé Nast chairman Si Newhouse had left early for his European vacation in order to work out a deal to bring in Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue, as editor of American Vogue after Wintour departs. Newhouse, however, has flatly denied that anything of the sort is going on, telling the Post’s Keith J. Kelly it was just a silly rumor. Still, media insiders note that Condé Nast has a history of making big personnel moves around the holidays so as to minimize press coverage.
Hitwise: Some down notes for Cyber Monday sites
It was a mixed bag for etailers on Cyber Monday. U.S. visits to retail web sites slipped 1 percent compared with the previous year, though some of the top sites saw increases. Amazon.com was the most-visited retail web site with nearly 11 percent of U.S. visits among the top 500 retail web sites, according to online measurer Hitwise. Amazon’s traffic was up 21 percent compared with Cyber Monday 2007 while WalMart.com’s traffic increased 6 percent year over year. WalMart.com was the second-most-visited retail site with nearly 9 percent of visits followed by Target.com with 5 percent. BestBuy.com and Sears.com rounded out the top five. While U.S. visits to brick-and-mortar store web sites were down 4 percent on Monday, visits to online-only web sites were up 5 percent. Comparison shopping web sites saw 21 percent fewer visitors and catalog web site visits were down 4 percent.
Nielsen Online: But e-shopper traffic rises 10 percent
Meanwhile, in other Cyber Monday findings, it looks as though there was more activity than last year, though not necessarily more shoppers or more buying. Online traffic from work and home to the Holiday eShopping Index was up 10 percent year over year on Monday, according to Nielsen Online. Unique visitors to the web sites included in the index reached 35.9 million, a 13 percent increase over this year’s Black Friday Web traffic. Nielsen Online cited aggressive holiday sales and incentives like free shipping for the boost in traffic, saying it was higher than many had anticipated. Beauty was the fastest-growing product category on Monday, up 151 percent over the previous Monday, while toys/videogames took the No. 2 spot, growing 112 percent. Apparel rounded out the top three with an increase of 58 percent. Despite all the hype over Cyber Monday, Nielsen Online expects Monday, Dec. 15 to be the peak day for online shopping traffic.
Programming notes: CBS sets midseason schedule
To fill the spot left open by the cancellation of “The Ex List,” CBS is turning to yet another procedural, though this one has already proven durable on Fridays. “Flashpoint” will fill the Friday 9 p.m. slot starting Jan. 9, following a solid run during its first season over the summer, when it set series highs in its final episodes. That’s part of CBS’s midseason revamp, which also features the premiere of Ashton Kutcher’s hidden camera show “The Game Show in My Head” on Jan. 3, airing back-to-back episodes in the 8 p.m. Saturday slot. New seasons of “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race” will kick off on Feb. 12 and Feb. 15, respectively, and new drama “Harper’s Island” will take over “Eleventh Hour’s” Thursday 10 p.m. slot on April 9. In other programming, ABC will launch a trio of weeknight 10 p.m. dramas. “Castle” will air Mondays starting March 9, “Cupid” will debut March 24 for Tuesdays, and “The Unusuals” takes the Wednesday spot beginning April 8. The CW will return “Reaper” Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on March 17. And Disney Channel has ordered additional episodes for the third season of “Hannah Montana” and given a second-season order to “The Suite Life on Deck,” a spinoff of “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.”
National Geographic signs on for second-by-second
Media researchers have long championed the development of second-by-second ratings, and now the National Geographic Channel will be the first network to receive such data from Nielsen. The two companies said yesterday that NGC has signed up for Nielsen’s new DigitalPlus service, part of the company’s set-top box analytics business, which culls data from more than 330,000 Charter Communications boxes in the Los Angeles area. The data will be complementary to Nielsen’s traditional people meter ratings and will include second-by-second commercial and commercial pod ratings and standard versus high definition measurement. Still, the new system lacks the demographic breakdowns so important to advertisers. Nielsen already offers minute-by-minute data, and competitor TNS Media Intelligence has been pursuing second-by-second as well.
Writers: AMPTP reneged on deal. Producers: Did not.
The actors aren’t the only group fighting with Hollywood producers these days. Though the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers signed a new deal months ago to end a four-month writers’ strike, the WGA has filed a complaint against producers, saying studios have failed to pay the new media residuals covered in that contract. The AMPTP immediately accused the WGA of trying to undermine talks with the Screen Actors Guild, which have resumed with a federal mediator. The WGA says it had no such intention. It claims its members have not been paid for streaming media or reuse of work for programs sold as online downloads. The AMPTP counters that some of its studios are still working out payment arrangements and that it takes time to put systems in place for payment.
Four networks lead at business and financial Emmys
When it comes to business and financial reporting, no one TV network stood above the rest this year. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences yesterday revealed the winners of the 6th Annual Emmy Awards for Business & Financial Reporting, with ABC, CBS, PBS and Bloomberg all taking home two awards each. ABC’s “World News with Charles Gibson” and “Nightline” each won, as did CBS’s “60 Minutes” and “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.” PBS’s “NOW on PBS” also won two, with Bloomberg’s “401(k) Hidden Fees” and “Deadly Brew: The Human Toll of Ethanol” each winning one. The other two reporting awards were won by CNBC for “Business Nation” and Minyanville.com for “Minyanville’s World In Review.” A complete list of winners can be found at http://www.emmyonline.tv/.
Tune up: YouTube assembling an online symphony
YouTube, the home of dancing cats and “Star Wars” fanboys, is going high brow. The popular online video-sharing site is creating the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, which is being dubbed the world’s first collaborative online orchestra and summit. Between Dec. 1 and Jan. 28, 2009, musicians are invited to submit audition videos including an interpretation of an original Tan Dun composition. The entries will be narrowed down to a group of semifinalists by a panel including musical experts from the London Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and others. Then YouTube users can vote on the semifinalists in February. Those who are selected to participate in the orchestra will be announced on YouTube on March 2, 2009.
Facebook party crashers trash British birthday bash
Old conventional wisdom: Don’t let fellow high school kids know your parents are out of town, or your house will end up trashed. New conventional wisdom: Don’t post an invitation to your 16th birthday party on Facebook, or your house will end up trashed. Georgina Hobday, a British girl celebrating her Sweet 16 on Saturday, did just that, and instead of the comparatively modest crowd of 100 she’d been expecting, 400 people showed up, including a group who have dubbed themselves the Facebook Republican Army. The Army finds parties to crash via the social networking site, and they did a job on Hobday’s swanky town house. Police had to come break up the party, but not before a garden shed was destroyed, cigarettes had burned the Hobdays’ furniture, and mirrors throughout the house were smashed, despite the presence of multiple adult bouncers. Advised Sussex officers to Daily Mail readers who read about the party, “'We would warn against people advertising events, especially parties on Facebook or any networking site.”
