CBS takes sweeps among total viewers and 25-54s
The big prize in the November sweeps, the adults 18-49 crown, is still up for grabs, but CBS has declared victory among total viewers and adults 25-54 with three nights yet to be tallied. Yesterday the network projected wins in both demos, with four shows producing series highs in total viewers this sweeps. In winning its eighth straight November sweeps in total viewers, CBS has averaged 11.79 million to ABC’s 10.48 million. NBC is third at 7.8 million and Fox fourth at 7.03 million. CBS also took its sixth straight November in 25-54s with a 4.0 average, edging ABC’s 3.8. NBC is in third at 3.3 and Fox fourth at 3.0. Among 18-49s, however, the race is still too tight to call. CBS and ABC are tied at 3.1; sweeps ends tomorrow night.
Has Ramsay's goose been cooked by affair claims?
Foul-mouthed celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay is stuck in a nightmare quite different from those he usually finds in the kitchen. This past weekend Britain’s News of the World newspaper ran a front-page story alleging that the star of “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares” and Fox's "Hell's Kitchen" was having an affair. “He’s an F-ing cheat,” screamed the tabloid headline. The newspaper claims that Ramsay, who has a wife and four children, has been having a seven-year affair with Sarah Symonds, author of the book “Having An Affair? A Handbook For the Other Woman.” Ramsay isn’t the first star that Symonds has been linked to – she was allegedly involved some time back with British author and former member of Parliament Jeffrey Archer. For Ramsay this revelation is at odds with the off-screen family man image he has carefully cultivated as a stark contrast to his fiery on-screen personality. So far Ramsay has not commented on the claims.
Cable news split: Colmes leaving 'Hannity & Colmes'
One of TV’s longest marriages is ending. Alan Colmes, best known as Fox News Channel’s liberal commentator and one half of the “Hannity & Colmes” show, will exit the program after 12 years, though he’s not leaving the network. Colmes said yesterday that he will maintain his role as FNC commentator and is developing his own weekend program for the No. 1 news channel. The show, one of the few in the increasingly partisan cable news environment that provides both a liberal and conservative viewpoint, trails only “The O’Reilly Factor” in the cable news ratings. Whether another commentator will be brought in to balance the conservative Hannity has not yet been decided. The latter recently reupped at the network.
Giggle-free zone: Fox drops its Saturday kids lineup
Saturday morning cartoons have been dying for years on broadcast, and now they are officially dead on Fox. The network has ended its deal with children’s production company 4Kids and in January will begin programming two hours of infomercials on Saturday mornings, blaming competition on cable for its failure to make kids’ programming viable. 4Kids, which also buys time on CW, had a four-hour block on Fox, but now two of those hours will be given back to local affiliates, with the other two for the aforementioned infomercials. Fox is the first of the major broadcast networks to completely stop programming for kids on Saturday mornings, though the networks have all farmed out their lineups to cable channels or other partners. It’s also believed to be the first to put program-length ads on its schedule. 4Kids’ deal with Fox was set to end next September, but the companies agreed to end the relationship in December instead.
Reader's Digest: We're launching a spiritual quarterly
One might think, in a time of economic turmoil, that struggling Americans would turn to prayer. And so while dozens of magazines have folded over the past few months, Reader’s Digest Association apparently thinks it’s the right time to launch the spiritually focused new quarterly The Purpose Driven Connection. The magazine, with a rate base of 400,000, will be edited by Pastor Rick Warren, who wrote the bestselling book “The Purpose Driven Life.” It will launch in early 2009, and the subscription will include daily Bible text messages. A companion social networking site will also be launched.
With uneasy economy, forecaster downgrades 2009
Reflecting the recent economic turmoil that’s recently roiled all sectors of media, including the internet, eMarketer has revised its online advertising forecast for 2009-’12. The forecast is still for annual growth, but at a much lower pace than projections issued in March and reissued in August. Next year, eMarketer forecasts $25.7 billion in revenue, down about 10 percent from its most recent projection. Farther out, the dips are even greater. In 2012, online revenue will hit $37 billion, but that’s off 26 percent from August’s forecast. EMarketer targeted display advertising for part of the slowdown. Instead of a 14 percent increase in 2009, the medium will get only a 7 percent boost, to $4.9 billion, mirroring predictions of a display slowdown by other forecasters.
Facebook wins landmark $873M anti-spamming suit
The popular online social network Facebook has won an $873 million judgment against a Canadian man who spread sexually explicit spam across the site. The dollar amount of the judgment should deter other spammers from targeting the social network’s more than 120 million users, or at least that’s what Facebook seems to be hoping. Whether it will collect on the decision, which was rendered Friday, remains to be seen. The spammer, Adam Guerbuez of Montreal, has been missing since Facebook filed its lawsuit against him about four months ago. Guerbuez was found guilty of gaining access to users’ personal profiles and sending out more than 4 million messages hawking everything from penis enlargement products to marijuana in March and April 2008. "Everyone who participates constructively in Facebook should feel confident that we are fighting hard to protect you against spam and other online nuisances," wrote Max Kelly, Facebook's director of security, on the company's blog.
Study: El Paso leading U.S. cities in text messaging
If you live in El Paso, Salt Lake City, Dallas or Memphis, you are more likely to text message than adults who live in other U.S. cities. Scarborough Research has found that 57 percent of cell phone subscribers 18 and older use the text message function in El Paso, while 55 percent use it in Salt Lake City, Dallas and Memphis. That’s compared with an average 48 percent of adult cell phone subscribers nationwide. So who is least likely to text message? Only 35 percent of cell phone subscribers utilize the text messaging feature on their phones in Grand Rapids, Mich., compared with 36 percent in Fort Myers, Fla., and Charleston, W. Texters are more likely to be between the ages of 18-24, and are 24 percent more likely to be African-American and 14 percent more likely to be Hispanic. Texters also tend to spend more on their cell phone service and online than their non-texting counterparts. On average, they spend $87 on their monthly cellular bill compared with all cellular subscribers, who spend an average of $75 monthly. Twenty percent of texters spend more than $1,000 online annually, versus 17 percent of all cellular users.
Random House turns a page to more digitized books
While it may be difficult to curl up with your laptop or PC, e-book sales are on the rise despite the current dismal economy, prompting book publisher Random House Inc. to digitize thousands of additional books, including novels by John Updike. Partly as a result of the popularity of Amazon.com’s Kindle reader, e-book sales are up triple-digit percentages this year, although Random House refuses to cite specific numbers. While Random House already has more than 8,000 of its books in digital form, its digital library is expected increase to nearly 15,000 in the next several months once the latest round of books, including several volumes of the "Magic Treehouse" children's series, are digitized. However, e-books still only make up a fraction of the overall market, perhaps 1 percent or less.
