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Game 3 of the NBA playoffs on NBC steamrolled over its Sunday night competition, winning every one of its half-hours among adults 18-49 and all but one half-hour in households. Those numbers also spilled over into the first half of “The Weakest Link” at 10 p.m., although the game show lost nearly 40 percent of its audience during its second half-hour. Without adjusting for time zone differences, the Lakers-Sixers game, which the Lakers won 96-91, averaged a 9.8/17 household rating and share and a 7.2 adult 18-49 rating. ABC wasn’t nearly as lucky on Saturday night with Game 7 of the NHL Stanley Cup Championships. The final game won every half-hour among adults 18-49, but just barely, and failed to win any half-hours in households. ABC placed third in households for the evening, behind CBS and Fox, both of which ran reruns. The preliminary Nielsen household rating and share and adult 18-49 rating for Sunday night were: NBC 10.0/18 and 7.3, CBS 8.1/14 and 3.0, ABC 5.7/10 and 2.6, and Fox 3.6/6 and 3.0. For Saturday night: CBS 4.9/10 and 1.6, Fox 4.4/9 and 2.8, ABC 4.2/9 and 3.1, and NBC 3.5/7 and 2.1.
More Disney layoffs: 1,000 this time
Walt Disney Company will today announce the firing of some 1,000 employees as part of a wider effort to reduce its workforce. Two months ago, the company announced the intention to rid itself of 4,000 employees through a combination of pink slips and a so-called "voluntary separation" program. Since then, about 3,000 Disney employees went with the voluntary severance package, leaving the company 1,000 more to eliminate. The company employed about 120,000 people before the downsizing started. The firings will begin today and continue through the end of July, according to published reports. Disney has not indicated precisely where the job cuts will happen. The theme parks are expected to be hit hard, along with the company's feature animation unit. Apparently, Disney had assumed more executives would accept the severance package offer than ultimately did, forcing a larger-than-expected layoff. Not surprisingly, company morale is reported as low. All in all, the job cuts will save Disney an estimated $400 million a year.
Consumer groups boycotting Channel One
Kids may be happy to watch TV during the school day, but that’s no reason to exploit them. So says a coalition of consumer and family rights groups that are leading an advertising boycott beginning today against Primedia’s in-school network, Channel One. Focus on the Family, the American Family Association and the Ralph Nader-founded Commercial Alert are among groups protesting the selling of ad time on Channel One, which is seen every day by roughly eight million students in 12,000 schools. Although students are only exposed to two minutes of advertising a day, in return for which their schools receive thousands of dollars’ worth of multimedia equipment, the groups behind the boycott argue that kids are being used as a captive audience for advertisers’ messages when they should be learning more important things. Channel One has faced such objections ever since it was launched 11 years ago.
Blood spattering in top edit ranks of NY Post
The New York Post relishes reporting on the comings and goings at other media companies, but on Friday it was the Post’s own door that was revolving non-stop. Four senior-level editors and two columnists were fired, according to The Wall Street Journal. Managing editors Stuart Marques and Marc Kalech were let go, as were city editor Jerry Schmetterer, assistant metro editor Lisa Baird, columnist Jack Newfield and Michael Lewittes, a columnist and Sunday features editor. The axings were the first major personnel moves since new editor Col Allan moved in six weeks ago to replace Xana Antunes. Allan was formerly the editor of the Sydney, Australia-based Daily Telegraph, which is owned, like the post, by News Corp.
New name for Ziff PC title: Family Internet Life
It’s about time: Ziff Davis Media’s Family PC has become the latest magazine to get hip to that internet thing you hear so much about these days. The 700,000-circulation title will relaunch this fall as Family Internet Life, building off the brand created by the 1.1 million-circulation Yahoo! Internet Life. The first issue of the redesigned magazine hits newsstands Sept. 18 with cover stories on "The New Internet Family" and "Top 100 Web Sites for Families." Ad pages in Family PC were down 38.8 percent to 141.04 through April of this year, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.
Rosie: Next I think I'll host a reality show
Will Rosie O'Donnell join the ranks of Jeff Probst and Mark L. Walberg as the host of a reality game show? Maybe so, according to a report in the New York Post. After her well-publicized decision to leave her talk show gig so she might become less of a public figure, O'Donnell has now let slip her plan to host a reality-based game show beginning in 2002. She described the show, according to Cindy Adams, as "a modern update of 'Let's Make a Deal' crossed with 'Queen for a Day.'" O'Donnell also said it would have human interest--"We'll help people," she said, according to Adams. The show will be produced from Orlando, while O'Donnell plans to move to Miami. She'll work one day a week on the one-hour program, which will be produced, like her talk show, for first-run syndication. This unofficial report came via a conversation at a social event in Manhattan on Thursday night. Contradictions and denials, as usual, are still to come.
Top editor out at Rodale's Organic Style
Organic Style, the new healthy-living title from Rodale Press, has yet to debut, but editor Carol Brooks has already been tossed out with the compost. Brooks has left the company, apparently squeezed out after vice chairman Maria Rodale installed a new editorial director at the Organic Living Group, according to the New York Post’s Keith Kelly. Organic Style is due out in August with a September/October issue and a 400,000 rate base. The pet project of Maria Rodale, it will be the company’s first launch since Steve Murphy signed on as president early last year.
Big do hip-hop summit pulls Washington bigs
Puff Daddy, Chuck D and LL Cool J are among rappers that will sit down with FCC Chairman Michael Powell and five members of Congress at this week's so-called Hip-Hop Summit. A variety of record industry executives and community leaders will also attend the meeting, which was organized by rap pioneer Russell Simmons. Scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, the summit will look into how hip-hop affects pop culture, how it is regarded by the music industry and how disputes among its stars have caused so much violence, most notably the deaths of Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur four years ago. The summit came together when Def Jam Records co-founder Simmons confronted FCC Chairman Powell at an awards gala about the $7,000 fine administered by his agency to a Colorado radio station for playing an edited version of the song "The Real Slim Shady" by Eminem. Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), Earl Hilliard (D-Alaska) and Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) will attend the summit with Sean "Puffy" Combs, KRS-One, Master P, Run DMC, Will Smith, Jay-Z, Method Man, Public Enemy's Chuck D, Foxy Brown and LL Cool J. Also present will be NAACP chief executive Kweisi Mfume, Recording Industry Assn. of America head Hilary Rosen and Nation of Islam ministers Louis Farrakhan and Ben Chavis Mohammed.
June 11, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
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