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 WORLD HEADLINES BUSINESS  MEDIA AS NEWS JOURNALISM ELECTION 2000 SOCIAL ISSUES ePORTAL NEWS ALL REVIEWS  LEAD STORIES INTERNET MEDIA NEWSPAPERS BROADCASTING CABLE DIGITAL TELEVISION ENTERTAINMENT BOOK PUBLISHING ALTERNATIVE PRESS  TOOLS  ARTICLE SEARCH eNEWS TIPS MEDIA ARCHIVE STORY LEADS U.S. GOVERNMENT NEWS WIRES |
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By Mark Jurkowitz, Globe Staff, Back in 1998, just before the debut of his signature, prime-time ''NewsStand'' program, CNN/USA president Rick Kaplan said, ''We know we're an underachieving network ... All of a sudden, we've come to a fork in the road, and there's only one path to go. And that's up.'' Yesterday, in a management realignment CNN described as ''designed to better leverage [its] leadership strength across multiple technology platforms,'' Kaplan, who failed to solve CNN's ratings problems, took the path out, departing his job in what is officially being called a resignation. The cable network announced that effective immediately, Philip Kent moves from president of Turner Broadcasting System International to become president of the CNN News Group. Eason Jordan, who headed up the international operation, will become chief news executive of the CNN News Group. Jim Walton, who was head of CNN/SI, is now president of CNN Networks/USA while Chris Cramer, formerly president of CNN International, has been named president of CNN Networks/International. Most of the attention, however, focused on Kaplan, the former ABC news executive who was pursued by CNN News Group chairman Tom Johnson for nearly three years before signing on in 1997. Kaplan oversaw a series of ambitious specials and the ''NewsStand'' collaboration with CNN's corporate cousins at Time Inc. that was dubbed ''appointment television.'' Yet, he couldn't transform CNN's reputation as a must-see in a crisis, but as what former Channel 5 (WCVB-TV) news director Jim Thistle calls video ''wallpaper when nothing's going on.'' According to Nielsen, the number of average daily CNN viewers dropped from 496,000 in the 1998-99 season to about 320,000 in the 1999-2000 season. Media analyst Tom Rosenstiel says that Kaplan's ''appointment television'' idea was ''a 1970s network broadcasting concept. Maybe you could have done that during the previous 10 years at CNN when there was only one cable network.'' TV historian Robert Thompson says that while CNN maintained high journalistic standards under Kaplan, rivals such as MSNBC and Fox News Channel seemed ''so much more inviting, so much more user-friendly ... The entertainment game is being better played by Fox and MSNBC.'' This story ran on page D4 of the Boston Globe on 8/31/2000
JUDGE
SENTENCES FOUR IN DEATH OF DOMINICAN JOURNALIST A judge sentenced
a retired Dominican general and three others to 30 years in prison each_
the maximum penalty _ in the 1975 assassination of an opposition journalist.Click
for more info The self-regulatory programs of the motion picture, music recording and electronic game industries each address violence, as well as sexual content, language, drug use and other explicit content that may be of concern to parents. In keeping with the president's request, the commission focused on the marketing of entertainment products designated as violent under these systems. . . . The commission carefully examined the structure of these rating and labeling systems, and studied how these self-regulatory systems work in practice. The commission found that despite the variations in the three industries' systems, the outcome is consistent: individual companies in each industry routinely market to children the very products that have the industries' own parental warnings or ratings with age restrictions due to their violent content. Indeed, for many of these products, the commission found evidence of marketing and media plans that expressly target children under 17. In addition, the companies' marketing and media plans showed strategies to promote and advertise their products in the media outlets most likely to reach children under 17, including those television programs ranked as the "most popular" with the under-17 age group, such as "Xena: Warrior Princess," "South Park" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"; magazines and Internet sites with a majority or substantial (i.e., over 35 percent) under-17 audience, such as Game Pro, Seventeen and Right On!, as well as mtv.com, ubl.com and happypuppy.com; and teen hangouts, such as game rooms, pizza parlors and sporting apparel stores. Movies Of the 44 movies rated R for violence the commission selected for its study, the commission found that 35, or 80 percent, were targeted to children under 17. Marketing plans for 28 of those 44, or 64 percent, contained express statements that the film's target audience included children under 17. For example, one plan for a violent R-rated film stated, "Our goal was to find the elusive teen target audience and make sure everyone between the ages of 12-18 was exposed to the film." Though the marketing plans for the remaining seven R-rated films did not expressly identify an under-17 target audience, they led the commission to conclude that children under 17 were targeted nonetheless. That is, the plans were either extremely similar to the plans of the films that did identify an under-17 target audience, or they detailed actions synonymous with targeting that age group, such as promoting the film in high schools or in publications with majority under-17 audiences. Music Of the 55 music recordings with explicit content labels the commission selected for its study, marketing plans for 15, or 27 percent, expressly identified teenagers as part of their target audience. One such plan, for instance, stated that its "Target audience" was "Alternative/urban, rock, pop, hard-core — 12- 34." The marketing documents for the remaining 40 explicit-content labeled recordings examined did not expressly state the age of the target audience, but they detailed the same methods of marketing as the plans that specifically identified teens as part of their target audience, including placing advertising in media that would reach a majority or substantial percentage of children under 17. Games Of the 118 electronic games with a Mature rating for violence the commission selected for its study, 83, or 70 percent, targeted children under 17. The marketing plans for 60 of these, or 51 percent, expressly included children under 17 in their target audience. For example, one plan for a game rated Mature for its violent content described its "target audience" as "Males 12-17 — Primary; Males 18-34 — Secondary." Another plan referred to the target market as "Males 17-34 due to M rating (the true target is males 12-34)." Documents for the remaining 23 games showed plans to advertise in magazines or on television shows with a majority or substantial under-17 audience. Most of the plans that targeted an under-17 audience set age 12 as the younger end of the spectrum, but a few plans for violent Mature-rated games targeted children as young as 6. MEDIA as NEWS NAB RADIO 2000 NAB ANNOUNCES NEW WEB STATION ADDED TO THE NAB RADIO SHOW EXHIBIT HALL FLOOR The NAB Radio Show Exhibit Hall will educate attendees on the latest technologies available for radio station Web sites. The Web Station, presented by Innuity Media Services, will comprise four Stations for attendees who are interested in gaining more knowledge about starting or enhancing their on-line initiative. The areas are: Getting Started Station, Advertising and Promotion Station, Content and Programming Station, and Database Marketing Station. Experts in these areas will make presentations and a daily panel comprising various new technology companies will be featured. Attendees will also have the opportunity at the Web Station’s Web Critique Corner to have their sites critiqued by Web professionals. The Web Station is part of Internet @ The NAB Radio Show. New to this year’s Radio Show, Internet @ The NAB MEDIA as NEWS The NAB Radio Show will feature expert insight, products and services to help attendees compete, partner and profit on the Web. For more information on the Radio NAB convention go to www.nab.org/conventions/radio2000/ or www.NAB.org/radio/ Click for more info |
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