RATHER SAYS HE’S LOOKING TO EXPOSE CBS’S TACTICS
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
60 MINUTES: THE PODCAST
The audio track of CBS’s 60 Minuteswill be available free at Apple’s iTunes Store and the CBS News website from 11:00 p.m. on the day of the telecast beginning next Sunday, the network announced Thursday. 60 Minutesexecutive producer Jeff Fager told Broadcasting & Cable: “60 Minutes is perfect for this kind of audio podcasting. Our broadcast has always been built on solid story telling, with or without the pictures.” He noted that the program has been simulcast by numerous CBS Radio affiliates for years.
WGA PRESIDENT DEMANDS FCC ACT ON INTEGRATED ADS
Newly reelected Writers Guild of America West President Patric Verrone has called for an FCC rule that would require TV networks to disclose when advertisements are integrated into a script. Speaking at an FCC hearing media ownership in Chicago, Verrone said, “When writers are told that we must incorporate a commercial product into the story lines we’ve written, we cease to be creators; we become advertisers ourselves. … The FCC should require a crawl to run at the bottom of the screen during the integration that would identify the product, its promoter and the fact that the writers and actors do not personally endorse the product’s use.” During the so-called Golden Age of Radio, it was commonplace for writers to be paid directly by advertisers to integrate plugs for their products in radio shows, a practice that was then winked at by networks and advertisers, who often produced the shows. (Sample from the Jack Benny radio show after Benny’s ancient Maxwell car fails to start: Benny’s valet and driver Rochester: “Mr. Benny, why don’t you get a new Hudson – ‘The Car You Step Down Into’?” Benny: “I can step down into my Maxwell.” Rochester: “But a Hudson has a floor!”)
DID SPONSORS SHUN KID NATION?
In an apparent effort to steer clear of the original controversy over Kid Nation, which included charges that the network and the show’s producers had skirted child-labor laws, advertisers may have shunned the show’s season premiere, resulting in the opening segment running 38 minutes without a single commercial. Reporting on the dearth of ads, Advertising Age asked, “Did CBS sell enough ads for the first episode of Kid Nation to warrant giving out a $20,000 gold star to one of the program’s young participants?” A CBS spokeswoman responded that the network has debuted other programs with a light commercial load in the past and that Kid Nationwill contain a “regular and full” commercial load when the second episode airs next week.
LUCAS FINANCING 200 STAR WARS-RELATED TV EPISODES
George Lucas says that his upcoming animated series The Clone Warsis so far removed from typical animated TV fare that “we’re still trying to figure out how to put it on the air.” In an interview with the online edition of TV Guide, Lucas said that the series would be rated PG-13 if it were a movie. “Everybody’s got the same conundrums – ‘How do we program it? Where does it live? Where can we put something like this?” You know, it has to go [on the air] after 9:00 p.m. and it can’t be on a kiddie channel." But while the series doesn’t fit into a convenient “niche” for advertisers and programmers, Lucas said, “It’s Star Warsand it’s really good, so I’m sure somehow or another, people will also start thinking outside the box and it will find its home.” Lucas indicated that he is independently financing 100 episodes of the animated series as well as 100 episodes of a live-action Star Wars-based series that has not yet begun shooting. “We’re just doing them on the faith that we’re going to [sell them],” he told TV Guide. “But I have enough confidence that this is good, and I’ll make it really good, so I’m not too worried about that part of it.”
