Here’s the five-day forecast: Weather Channel about to be bought by NBC
Richard told you earlier this year that The Weather Channel was for sale. Now it looks like recent rumors that NBC was going to be the one to buy the TV network are true. Reuters says that the deal should be closed in the next few days, and the reported price is between $3 billion and $4 billion.
If you haven’t noticed, weather is the most important part of a newscast now. I was just talking to my roommate about this yesterday. Every single local newscast opens with news about the weather. Not just tornadoes and hurricanes, but bad rain storms that might pop up later in the day (wow, rainstorms in the summer - shocking!). Weather is the lead story (death, war, and the election can wait), the follow-up story, and the actual weather segment halfway through the show is given another good 7 or 8 minutes.
This could be good for NBC though. Since they love crossovers and filling the screen with ads for other shows and stunt casting, maybe Howie Mandel can do the weather once in a while. Or maybe Donald Trump can do commentary on California wildfires (”You’re fired!”). Or how about Masi Oka in front of a green screen giving the weather? Better yet, create a new Heroes hero that controls the weather and promote it on the network.
Ad placement gone wrong - VIDEO
Digg has noticed a case of really unfortunate ad placement for Hotels.com during an ABC news cast. Right after a commercial airs touting the hotel bargains at the site, a news report begins about how Hotels.com users are at risk for credit card fraud.
Video after the jump…
At least we can be certain that news reporting is not being influenced by advertisers. Or maybe Hotels.com simply doesn’t have the influence that, say, the tobacco lobby once had.
I do wonder what event the newscast was talking about (it was cut off before enough details could be given). I think it was this news item from 2006 which involved a stolen laptop from an Ernst & Young auditor which contained the credit card information for Hotels.com users. In which case it represents a security breach more of Ernst & Young than Hotels.com. You’d think the crew behind Tech Watch would have at least moved the commercial to a different commercial break to alleviate the irony.
Have any of you seen a similar situation of an unfortunately placed commercial?
Katie Couric does the best newscast, says RTNDA
While viewership continues to slip and all that “Katie is leaving after the election” talk still swirls, it looks like the industry actually likes her show.
The CBS Evening News won the Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Newscast from the Radio Television News Directors Association the other night. ABC won the most awards, including Best Overall, Documentary, Hard news, Spot News Coverage, and Videography. Not really sure what the difference is between Best Newscast and Best Overall, but maybe Best Overall combines all facets of a TV network’s news division while Best Newscast just focuses on the 30 minute nightly show that the network does. Either way it’s something I’m sure you’re going to see in ads for The CBS Evening News.
CBS News also won for Best Web Site (I’d link to the full list of awards but the RTNDA site seems to be down right now.)
This is the CBS Evening News … with Keith Olbermann?
Interesting (and very long) article in The New Yorker about Keith Olbermann. Mostly it’s about Olbermann’s career, his take on the news, his battles against various politicians, his special comments, and what others at MSNBC think of him (they even interviewed Tim Russert for the story), but there’s a very intriguing morsel halfway through the piece that got my attention.
Olbermann was interviewed twice to take over for Dan Rather on The CBS Evening News.
Yup, back when Rather was leaving the show and Olbermann’s contract was going to be up at MSNBC, CBS President Les Moonves and CBS News President Andrew Heyward met with Olbermann in his apartment and asked him how he would change the show if hired. Heyward wasn’t quite convinced he was right for the job (he was wary of such a strong personality in the anchor seat, with personal opinions and using music in stories), but after Heyward left and was replaced by Sean McManus, McManus also had a meeting with Olbermann. Of course, we all know what happened: Katie Couric was hired, the show has stayed in third place, and there are many rumors floating that Couric will leave after the election this November.
It would have been interesting to see what someone like Olbermann could do with a network newscast, but maybe it would be too radical a change. Then again, not many people seem to be watching the network news these days, and Moonves did say he wanted a big change when Rather left. Will they give Olbermann a third look if and when Couric leaves?