360AM: Cable News Ratings Boosted by Strike
Cable360AM — News briefing for Wednesday, Jan. 30 »
The Cable360 newsroom is proud to announce that this is our first green edition of 360AM. Good morning.
Ratings of cable news networks have benefited from the three-month-old writers’ strike at the expense of broadcast networks, Variety reports. The presidential election season hasn’t hurt the news nets either. Ratings of broadcast networks are starting to show the effects of the strike in year-to-year comparisons. [Variety]
Shalom TV joins Comcast’s national on-demand lineup on Feb. 1, the same day that Time Warner Cable of New York and New Jersey launches the Jewish programmer as an on-demand option. For more on Shalom TV’s ethnic lineage, check out Cable360 editorial director/tummler Seth Arenstein’s story from a couple years back.
NBC Universal president and CEO Jeff Zucker said in a keynote address yesterday at the NATPE convention in Las Vegas that the “glitzy” upfront presentation NBC U mounts every May at Radio City Music Hall is a “vestige of the last decade,” Variety reports. This year NBC U will conduct presentations with individual media buying agencies. [Variety]
Watchdog groups are attempting to determine if products that are cast as "green" in TV commercials live up to the hype, but for now they’re relatively toothless, the Wall Street Journal reports. Many of these groups have been created by the advertising industry in its effort to police itself and avoid embarrassing public relations disasters. The Federal Trade Commission will be revising its guidelines for older marketing terms such as "biodegradable," but "they don’t deal with standards for trendier environmental claims," the Journal says. [Wall Street Journal]
Advertisers spent $2.3 billion trying to reach African-American consumers in the 12 months between October 2006 and September 2007, according to Nielsen’s African-American ad spending analysis. [SYS-CON Media]
Last weekend New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg golfed with CBS Corp. president and CEO Leslie Moonves and shared a meal with Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger, Variety reports. Bloomberg was not gauging whether he would get support from Hollywood’s chieftains in the event he runs for president. News of these events was not leaked by anybody for any particular reason either. [Variety]
In CableFAX Daily: Coverage of the NATPE convention. Yesterday’s 360AM.
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