What do the McKinsey folks have in store for Condé Nast?

McKinsey has just started rolling up its sleeves at Condé Nast, which means the denizens of 4 Times Square probably won't learn for a few months what the outcome will be. Condé isn't a stranger to the ways of the consulting firm; it had its fingerprints on the reorg of parent Advance Publications' business units and the move of some back-office functions to Delaware a few years ago, according to people who were there at the time. McKinsey is probably best known for its longtime association with Time Inc., though, where it helped the company outsource IT, consolidate data centers and evaluated edit costs, and generally "interviewed everyone to death," recalls a Time Inc. vet. At Condé, McKinsey is sure to look at how to ferret out expenses that escaped the knife in an earlier cost reduction. Some speculate that could take the form of reducing the frequency of some magazines (a biweekly New Yorker?) and consolidating functions common to multiple titles, like fact-checking. But if the company is to survive and thrive beyond this unprecedented downturn, a fundamental rethinking seems in order. Condé Nast is at a watershed moment. An outsider familiar with both the publisher and McKinsey put it this way: "It needs to decide what it wants to be. Can the fundamental style of the company be sustained? Can it produce these wonderful publications at a much lower cost?" If this person's prediction comes true, Condé may ditch some of its smaller pubs and hold on to its crown jewels, like Vogue and Vanity Fair. Time will tell.

—Posted by Lucia Moses

Oscar winners spice up TCA press tour

It isn't always that I get to enjoy both the network and cable portion of the Television Critics Association press tour, but day two of the cable portion featured two Academy Award winners: Robin Williams and Whoopi Goldberg. Williams was here in Pasadena to hawk his first solo HBO comedy special in seven years, Robin Williams: Weapons of Self-Destruction, while always-busy Goldberg is executive producer of Head Games, TLC's first-ever trivia-driven series. Another Oscar winner (and Williams' co-star in 1997's Good Will Hunting), Matt Damon, was present on Wednesday to promote his appearance on History Channel documentary The People Speak. Will the upcoming network portion feature any Oscar winners? Stay tuned.

—Posted by Marc Berman

We pose a few unanswerable questions on Microhoo Search

After all the hubbub yesterday following the announcement of a deal between the Internet’s favorite "will they or won’t they?" couple (Microsoft and Yahoo, not Ross and Rachel), tons of questions remain. For one, how is it going to feel to be a Microsoft sales exec once this deal goes through? Probably as good as it feels right now to be a Yahoo engineer who worked for years on Project Panama. Your client comes to you next year with a large spend opportunity, but wants to integrate their search and display efforts. And you’ll have to say, "Sorry, call Yahoo." Secondly, how much confidence can team MSN have in Microsoft’s commitment to the online ad business, when throughout the negotiation process, rumors swirled that Yahoo would take over display ads sales as well? The only reason Yahoo didn’t, it seems, was that it would be too complex. "The display market in general is more complicated than search," said Hilary Schneider executive vp, Yahoo North America in an interview yesterday. "This really ensures that we hit the ground running. We have nothing else to announce today, but who knows what the future holds?" And lastly, why didn’t Microsoft insist that Yahoo Search adopt the Bing brand and the Bing user experience? The company is spending close to $100 million to get people to think of Bing as a better alternative to Google, which appears to be having a decent impact. But Yahoo is still going to be able to make search look and function however it wants. As Yusuf Mehdi, senior vp, online audience business group at Microsoft, explained, “It’s not actually the Bing experience.” Instead, Yahoo Search will simply carry some sort of “powered by Bing” logo (something like this?). Seems like a waste of all that new market share the company is gaining.

—Posted by Mike Shields

Will the real Fake Michael Kay Twitter feed please stand up?

With 100 games on the books, the New York Yankees boast a 61-39 record and are in first place in the American League East. After having missed the playoffs last season for the first time since 1993, the Bronx Bombers look poised for an October run, as long as Mariano Rivera's cutter holds up. Still, much of the joy of fandom lies in the schizoid compulsion to carp about everything that's even tangentially related to the hometown team––there've been times I've wanted to murder throttle octogenarian pot-banger Freddy Sez—and perhaps nothing excites that sort of ambivalence quite like the booth jockeys. Which brings us to Michael Kay, the Tariq Aziz of the YES Network. While I won’t go into a Mushnickian rant about how much of a homer Kay is––he works for an RSN that is owned by the Steinbrenners, for Jeter’s sake, so it’s no surprise that he’s not going to take shots at the team––I must admit that there are moments when the play-by-play guy is just a little insufferable. Apparently, at least one fan has even less tolerance for Kay's chatter, and by way of voicing his (or her) disdain, has presented the world with the hilarious Fake Michael Kay Twitter. Each Tweet leads off with the salutation Kay deploys whenever he segues into a promo ("Hey Fans!"), and from there spirals off into inspired lunacy. Fake M.K. particularly likes to lampoon authentic M.K.'s long-standing habit of insinuating that David Cone is a shiftless drunkard, and shows no mercy for the incessant "Who But W.B. Mason" promos that make every telecast a primer on office supplies and coffee inventories. Funny, brutal stuff…although its hard to imagine that YES won't lobby Twitter to pull the account or sign him up.

—Posted by Anthony Crupi

Barefoot BFF's hit 30 Rock hard and cook up some ad pages, too

Ina Garten and Stephen Drucker are a culinary and design tour de force. The Barefoot Contessa and her BFF, the House Beautiful editor-in-chief, do not take celebrating the 2009 Kitchen of the Year lightly. They build a full-on replica smack the middle of Rockefeller Center. Then they party like culinary royalty for a full week. I don't take celebrating the 2009 Kitchen of the Year lightly, either. I almost quit my job and moved to 49th Street for a week. Would they welcome me and ask me to prep some brioche and then reward my efforts with flowing praise and my own show? OK I did not quit my job, but I did breeze by 30 Rock to experience the Most Important Kitchen of 2009. I'll admit that I was slightly surprised that a magazine did such a lavish promotion. But HB's vp/publisher Kate Kelly Smith points out that not only is the event longer in duration, it also has attracted more sponsors (19 in all, versus 14 last year) and more than doubled the ad pages from sponsor companies for the title's October issue. Still, it was a perfect execution. I even got a little emotional when I saw the glass bottle of Coach Farms heavy cream in the fridge. Nice touch.

—Posted by Cindee Weiss

Weinstein Co. appealing to the meathead market with 'Inglourious Basterds'

Try to find a more muscle-bound media plan than the one around Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino's kosher-porn flick coming out next month. Cases in point: A partnership with TNT for the premiere of Jerry Bruckheimer cop series Dark Blue, with a 90-second extended trailer and co-branded tune-in spots; a deal with Ultimate Fighting Championship that put the movie all over the Vegas venue where Brock Lesnar and Frank Mir battled it out a few weeks ago; and Tarantino and Brad Pitt plugging the World War II film at Spike TV's Guys Choice awards, a celebration of beer drinking, babe watching and head banging. There's an explanation for the meathead marketing. The Weinstein Co. is in desperate need of a hit and hopes to create one with the help of young action junkies. What better way to do that than position Basterds as a bloody late-summer adrenaline rush? Problem is, reviews are calling the movie "talky," with large stretches not in English. The Hollywood Reporter says, "For a war movie there is very little action." Sure would hate to be around when the testosterone set realizes they've been lured into a two-and-a-half-hour art-house flick.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

William Shatner does his best Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin's final speech as the governor of Alaska had some people confused. Who better than William Shatner to smooth out the nuances with one of his patented dramatic interpretations? The pop-culture moment from Monday's Tonight Show was not quite as inspired as Shatner's twisted takes on "Rocket Man" or "Mr. Tambourine Man," but he was a lot younger back then, and those words made far more sense than Palin's drivel. It's about on par with his early Priceline ad performances. Bill's from Canada, which is close enough to Alaska to provide him with some frozen-brained insight into what the former vice-presidential candidate had in mind. He makes the speech ... well, not poetic, exactly, nor especially coherent. In fact, the text sounds more baffling than ever. Still, Shatner's not half as frightening as Palin, and he looks almost as cute in a wig.

—Posted by David Gianatasio

What popped in 1955 still has kernels of value today

In this installment of MediaFreak's Spot On video series, which looks at what made some classic commercials so great and so memorable, Mediaweek's Alan Frutkin looks back at an abstract and jazz-infused animated spot from 1955 for EZ Pop popcorn. Alan's commentary on the groundbreaking ad is above; the full EZ Pop commercial is below.

The Gosselins are back, with a lighter spin on dysfunction

TLC's reality series Jon and Kate Plus 8 returns Aug. 3 with fresh material chronicling the lives of the troubled Gosselin family.  Save for the two heart-wrenching breakup episodes in May, it seems, from the sneak peek TLC is back to the lighter side. But really, who cares if Kate Gosselin, now on her own, struggles to build a tent for her eight adorable kids in their backyard. In truth, as painful as it is to watch, those kids are a backdrop to the real drama unfolding. Her estranged husband Jon is the real show. Thanks to his escapades he has become a tabloid cash cow, saving the spring and summer for Us Weekly, Star and People. Star even got its own exclusive last week when its reporter resigned after hooking up with Jon. So how will TLC ride out this storm? Were cameras with Jon and his girlfriends in Saint-Tropez, the Hamptons, or at his new pad in NYC? Not likely. Unless TLC gets real, JK+8's audience will walk away. Then again, maybe it's time that we all walk away.

– Posted by Lisa Granatstein

Teasers for the final season of 'Lost' don't exactly make everything crystal clear

These two videos, presented by ABC executives over the weekend at Comic-Con in San Diego, seem to lend credence to the "Lost is Going to Start From the Beginning and the Crash Never Happened" theory spawned by last May's season finale, which ended in a nuclear explosion caused deliberately by the show's castaways, who were seeking to rewrite history. These clips, along with the presence at Comic-Con of former cast member Dominic Monaghan (whose beloved character, Charlie, died a few years ago), definitely appear to maybe indicate that next year (the show's last) may start things all over again. Right? Or are they part of an elaborate trick, some dream sequence we'll see next year, deliberately designed to throw us all off? The Lost producers would never do that, right? It really doesn't matter either way. Fans of the show are once again in a frenzy online and at water coolers, despite the fact that the next episode won't air until 2010.

—Posted by Mike Shields