Google and Bing: the battle of the verb

Microsoft's ad campaign for Bing seems to be breaking through, as the software giant finally is creating some buzz on search front. But as other marketers have seen in the past, once a brand becomes synomymous with a product, it's tough to beat (e.g. Kleenex, Xerox). Or as Rob Norman CEO of GroupM Interaction told Mediaweek last year, though Microsoft's search product is actually pretty decent, "The problem is, the other guys got the verb." Indeed, for some, the phrase "to Google" means "to search. Still, the folks at Redmond better hope this video from College Humor is just a joke.

—Posted by Mike Shields

Will 'OK!' magazine's morbid Jacko cover win newsstand sales?

This week, OK! Weekly made a brazen move in publishing a photo of a dying Michael Jackson on its cover. (See the full cover here.) With the cover—for which owner Richard Desmond reportedly paid the equivalent of $500,000 in U.S. dollars—the British-owned celebrity mag is going to stick out on the newsstand among competing news and celebrity magazines with their flattering tribute issues, which is precisely what OK! is going for. Yet it might seem like a move of desperation on the part of OK!, in the context of the frequent masthead changes, soft newsstand sales and editorial zig-zagging that have made OK! itself the subject of some less than flattering media coverage. After tilting toward celebrity lifestyle coverage, it would now appear to be swinging back toward hard news with this issue. So, with the Jackson cover, it risks not only offending fans but confusing them. Maybe it’ll turn out to be a win for them on the newsstand. But if not, it’ll be not only a big misstep, but a costly one.

—Posted by Lucia Moses

The Weather Channel sings a better tune

Have you noticed the shift in music playing during those Local on the 8s breaks on The Weather Channel of late? (Never mind how dorky it is that I picked up on the new tunes). Once the domain of truly awful "soft-jazz" tunes, the likes of which you’d hear in Hyatt elevators, the Local on the 8s have recently begun to spin actually listenable music, including The Allman Brothers’ "Blue Sky" (nudge nudge wink wink), The Smiths’ "Oscillate Wildly" (hey, kinda like a palm tree in a hurricane) and the instrumental jam that ends The Rolling Stones’ "Can’t You Hear Me Knockin" (which hailstorms have been known to do). Apparently parent NBC Universal has woken up to the notion that men 18-49 don’t really cotton to the saccharine sounds of Spyro Gyra. "Oh, it’s definitely a conscious move," says Geoffrey Darby, TWC’s executive vp of programming. "There had been no cue to tell the viewer the break was coming. So if I got you to notice [by playing a cooler song], then I just got a big win." But more musical experimentation may be on its way. Darby says the network is thinking about scoring the local breaks (Santa Ana winds, meet woodwinds). And if that doesn’t work, we recommend throwing a few other tracks into the mix, starting with The Doors’ "Riders on the Storm."

—Posted by Michael Bürgi

Radio remembers Michael Jackson, but some stations are left behind

In the old days of radio, not so long ago, when a major talent died, the station would break the news on the air. If it was a music station, you can bet there'd be wall-to-wall music tributes, archival interviews, on-air calls with listeners, friends, relatives and anyone who knew the deceased.
  Some of that happened on Thursday when Michael Jackson was pronounced dead. News stations such as CBS's KFWB-FM in Los Angeles was 24/7 with the news. WCBS-FM, the famous oldies stations (now called Classic Hits) in New York, went wall-to-wall with music from 7 p.m. to midnight. On Friday, the station worked with sister news station WINS-AM, which shot back interviews with people in Times Square and at the Apollo Theater. On his morning show in Philadelphia, Danny Bonaduce, who went to school with MJ, was interviewed by CBS stations in Boston, Cleveland, San Francisco, Seattle and other markets. In Boston, WBMX-FM set up an HD MJ channel. Many stations set up special tributes on their Web sites, such as WVGC-FM "Dave FM" in Atlanta, allowing listeners to write live comments. In Pittsburgh, WBZW-FM and WZPT-FM set up a live tribute at Melon Arena, site of the last MJ show, for Saturday. New media also followed the old radio model. AOL Radio set up a dedicated MJ channel, as did Sirius XM. MTV and BET both ran wall-to-wall videos.
  But not all radio could react. Some Clear Channel stations were hampered by corporate edict, running voice-tracked programming with no live bodies to modify the content. Those stations didn't even break to announce the news. A CC station in Minneapolis was still talking about MJ's upcoming concerts hours after he had been declared dead. Not all CC stations were hog-tied. WKTU-FM in New York went wall-to-wall music. But for those listeners who heard the voice-tracked stations stuck in some never-never land, the damage was done. They may never come back to radio if they feel it's a medium disconnected from what's happening now.

—Posted by Katy Bachman

The grueling yet proper way to get ready for the final season of 'Lost'

Over Father's Day weekend, my girlfriend and I rented disc one of the first season of Lost. It's been my goal for a while to get her hooked on my favorite show, not only because I think she'd enjoy it but also because I felt like a dick on Wednesday nights this season, leaving her to read her girlie mags for an hour while I engrossed myself in the complex Lost world. (Wednesdays came to be known as "Lost Night," though to her, they were probably lowercase "lost" nights.) Anyhow, after watching 95 percent of the episodes over the five-year series arc, I've come to realize that the ABC show is less about what happens in the foreground (i.e., the first time you watch it) and more about what goes on in the background (i.e. the second time you watch the same episode). Somewhere in that muck, I believe, is the key to the show, which scads of bloggers try to analyze (and answer) on the Web daily. (I actually had a nightmare a few months back that I watched the series finale and didn't understand how the show ended. If that happens, I might give up on life completely.) So, I've made it my goal to watch the entire series, beginning to end, before the final season drops next year. A tall feat, I realize, but I think it will allow for a) a stronger relationship with my girlfriend and b) a better sense of closure when this incredible show finally draws to a close.

—Posted by Will Levith

Listener-controlled radio. Are they crazy?

Kudos to CBS on its move to launch the industry's first completely user-controlled on-air radio show next week in San Francisco. According to Mediaweek, KITS-FM will use the Jelli social-media service to allow listeners to "create the playlist, determining what is broadcast over the airwaves seconds before it plays. The community can even vote to pull a song off the air instantly." Of course, this kind of power must be rationed out in small doses—from 10 p.m. until midnight on Sunday nights. I've developed a playlist that can't fail: Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper." Just the one song, played over and over. Come on, that's classic. Hear it once, and you've gotta hear it again. Who'd vote that off? My backup plan is Moby's "Southside." Who says radio's dead?

—Posted by David Gianatasio