Katie "Cha-Ching" Couric's goodbye

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- NBC is making the most of Katie Couric's "Today" finale. According to buyers, the network charged $110,000 for a 30-second spot in Ms. Couric's final appearance on the morning show she first appeared on 15 years ago. Media buyers got a bargain if they bought the show in last year's upfront, when spots sold for $50,000.

According to industry executives, media buyers began scrambling for the 25% of available inventory the day before Ms. Couric confirmed her departure on air. Among the major categories ramping up a presence on the show, expected to rate highly, are movie studios, electronics companies, home-appliance manufacturers and travel and tourism marketers. Last week NBC sold the last of 50 units in the three-hour broadcast.

On April 3 Ms. Couric told viewers: "I wanted to tell all of you out there that after listening to my heart and my gut, I've decided I'll be leaving 'Today' at the end of May." She will be managing editor of the "CBS Evening News," and becomes the first woman solo anchor of a nightly news broadcast. CBS is paying a reported $15 million to Ms. Couric for the role, and the network has said it will look for a corresponding increase in ad pricing.

Read the entire article here.

How to Travel Practically Anywhere

This is a great book if you're in the midst of booking a getaway. With summer upon us, most of us will be doing some form of leisure travel. This book, How to Travel Practically Anywhere, can make what could be a headache a little easier.

No matter what type of trip you're planning--business or pleasure, domestic or international, budget or splurge, exotic getaway or family visit--How to Travel Practically Anywhere is an indispensable resource.

Rend the Heavens in concert tonight!

Rend the Heavens will make their Nashville debut tonight at The End in downtown Nashville.

I'm not sure if there's cover, but we go on at 9:30 if you're in the area and can make it.

See ya there!

say it with a primate

Correspondence is a multi-faceted and occasionally tricky business. Often communicative subtleties can be lost through reducing messages to black text on a white background. Do you ever find that simply tapping words into a bog-standard email causes the loss of their potency ? Sometimes it's like trying to convey nuance through smoke-signals.

But no longer, I declare! For now we have the ultimate messaging tool at our disposal : Monk-e-mail!

Surely all messages should be sent via the medium of a simian that speaks ? And a configurable monkey at that. There are four different voices to choose from, and countless combinations of ape attire, accessories, and areas in which they can be placed. You can even have the monkey talk to the sound of your own recorded voice.

As such, you can cater your chimp for the subtext that your message requires. Inviting friends to a party ? Give your monkey a tiara. Do you need to exude sophistication ? Give your monkey a pipe. Quitting your job ? Give your monkey a background of a tropical island, to show that you have better things in store for yourself.

Try it - Monk-e-mail will change your life; I swear. You may never use another method of communication. In fact, you may never do anything else ever again. So get mailing, monkey-lovers.

Psyched about Social Networking

Sixty percent of trendsetters and 33% of mainstream 14-34 year-olds have a social networking page. These are just three of the many social networking trends you need to know:

Big Brother: Some young people are now afraid to create MySpace/ Facebook pages out of fear that potential college and job recruiters, and even school and law enforcement agencies, will read them. As one young person told us, “My friend got busted by undercover cops surfing the net looking for graffiti artists; he had posted a photo of his graffiti next to his tag.” Parents snooping in their kids’ lives aren’t anything new, but now young people have to be aware of a much wider audience stealthily investigating them online.

Cyberbullying: Kids are creating fake profiles under their targets’ real names and posting horrific photos and remarks to make them look bad online. Because kids are waging war against each other on online pages that are seen by most of their peers, there is potential for real damage.

Netiquette: As the distinction between friends, acquaintances, and contacts gets more complex online (for instance, with technology that allows an inner circle to view certain photos, while others are blocked), we’ve been seeing an online etiquette or “netiquette” evolve. MySpace has a “Top 8” category and Flickr distinguishes between “Family and Friends” versus “Contacts.” We’ve heard that being excluded from the “Top 8” list is affecting “real” relationships.

-The Cassandra Report
Three times a year The Intelligence Group publishes The Cassandra Report®, an in-depth look into the lives of 14-34 year old consumers. It’s a comprehensive understanding of emerging trends across a broad range of topics, including technology, entertainment, fashion, spending, marketing, attitudes and consumer products.

wouldn't THIS be loverly

Coke Ad

This never ran in the US. Only in Austrailia, and maybe the UK. Very interesting.

HT: rm116

Apple Store Fifth Avenue

Move over Prada. Get out of the way Gucci, Armani, and Louis Vuitton. There's a new store in town that's redifining high-end shopping. Fifth Avenue, meet Apple.

Tonight at 6pm EST Apple will open a store on Fifth Avenue and stay open 24/7. I don't think many people will be out shopping for Jimmy Choo shoes at 3am, do you? Which is why this is so cool. In a market that is driven by "soft goods", we now are seeing a tech store opening on 5th. Granted, it's not Best Buy (thank God). I think it's inhances the branding of Apple to the more afluent, trendy, creative class.

The Studio is the creative hub of the Apple Store, Fifth Avenue. A place where your ideas and their help come together to enhance your Mac projects. Whether your interest is photography, moviemaking, music or everyday use of your Mac, their team of Creatives can help you. They’ll teach you one-on-one how to re-touch photos, compose music and make Hollywood-style movies.


The Apple Store, Fifth Avenue, is the destination for creative or technical help when you need it. If you’re looking for special events and workshops, the Apple Store SoHo, with its new state-of-the-art theater is the place to go.

In keeping with Mr. Jobs's penchant for eye-catching designs, all that will be visible from the street is the entrance, surrounded by a roughly three-story-high glass cube jutting from the ground, reminiscent of I.M. Pei's glass pyramid at the entrance to the Louvre museum in Paris.

*sigh* I wish I could be there. They are giving away a free T-shirt to the first 2,500 people who come through the store. It promises to be a good time.

my new addiction

One of the gifts my wife was given after an operation she had was a book of Sudoku puzzles. The object is to fill in the squares with numbers 1-9 so that each row has only 1-9, each column has only 1-9 and each box has only 1-9. No row, column, or box can have a repeated number. It's great. We both sit on our back patio and see who can finish first.

To play them online go here. Have fun!

Fit to be a Leader

Can a rigorous workout routine help your professional communication skills? It works for politicians and executives; it can work for you.

FEEL LIKE A LEADER. What does this have to do with professional communications? Plenty. When you're speaking to a customer, employee, investor, or prospect, how you look, feel, act, and sound all help you connect with the people listening to you. Leaders who are physically fit exude far more energy than their peers.

The other week I spoke with the general manager of Hersheypark Entertainment, who oversees a sprawling complex made up of an amusement park, a zoo, arenas, and hotels in Hershey, Pa. O'Connell had quite an eye-opening experience last year after he returned from a leadership course. As part of the program, his employees were asked to fill out a survey about their boss.

NO MORE TWINKIES. O'Connell scored very high on all attributes of leadership -- except for one. His employees thought O'Connell lacked energy, and it altered their perception of him. They were right. O'Connell was more than 40 pounds overweight. The amusement park's perimeter is 11 miles, and he often had to take rests while showing people around.

O'Connell, who is a young man with high expectations for his professional career, thought if his employees said he lacked energy, what did his superiors think of him? "I had been pouring 150% of my energy into one aspect of my life," he said. But everything changed once O'Connell began to focus on an aspect of his life he had neglected: physical fitness.

O'Connell immediately began working out one hour a day, seven days a week. Less than a year later the transformation is dramatic. He dropped 35 pounds and wants to lose another 15. His cholesterol and blood pressure, previously on the high side, also dropped dramatically. "I have a boatload of energy," he says now. "I'm happier with myself and it has had a positive impact on the folks I interact with. I'm a different guy, and people see it."

SETTING THE PACE. O'Connell now sets the example for others. Candy and junk food are largely gone from the company cafeteria, and people are seen jogging and exercising far more. Instead of having to stop and rest on those 11-mile walks around the amusement park, O'Connell now sets the pace!

When it comes to public appearances, there is a big difference between fit leaders and out of shape ones. The former have more energy, enthusiasm, passion, and confidence. They also have better posture, which makes them look and feel better. They smile more. They radiate leadership. Due to their demanding roles and travel schedule, they can not afford not to exercise. Neither can you.

-By Carmine Gallo for Businessweek Online

Happy Mother's Day

Oh to have a brother.

Grey's Craze

I cannot believe this show!! At the end I was left speechless.

I know from a past interview that one of the characters is leaving. I just ass-umed that they were only talking about the interns, but I think they were talking about everyone. ANY ONE of them could leave.

At first I thought it was Alex because he was being such a jerk. Then last night I thought it could have been Izzy with what she's doing with Denny. But then Addison exploded to Derek and said she couldn't compete with him and Meredith. But THEN Dr. Burke got SHOT! So is HE leaving?! Will HIS heart go to save Denny?

Oh my gosh. I can't wait for tonight's two hour finale!!

YouTube who?

User-generated online video content is continuing to flourish, but will young people start to resent the fact that big sites such as YouTube are raking in the profits when they’re doing all the work? One company thinks so. Revver is a new site that’s similar to YouTube with one major difference: it shares revenue with users. Video creators receive 50% of ad revenue associated with any clips they upload, and any users who drive traffic (known as “affiliates”) to Revver clips receive 20% of ad revenue. In other words, people who “grab” videos directly from Revver and post them on their blog, MySpace profile or other networking site, IM window, or via email have the potential to make some serious profits.

Advertisers can specifically choose which videos they want to associate with (e.g. a skateboard brand can advertise exclusively on skateboarding videos or an online music store can advertise at the end of a music segment with a direct click-through to purchase the music) and can track traffic in real time, with details on referring sites, ranking of affiliates responsible for posting videos, click through rates, etc. Brands also have the opportunity to work with Revver to have users generate their own commercials.

Aside from the fact that the ability to make advertising contextually relevant could be invaluable to marketers, we expect young people to like this site that gives back to them when no one else does. Who knows how much money the Star Wars kid could be sitting on now had he originally posted his video to Revver?

HT: Trendcentral

phonetag

Recently I wrote about StreetWars: Killer, the large scale hide-and-seek “assassin” game that’s taken Los Angeles by storm. Next up in the manhunt game category is PhoneTag, a game in which players track each other down using a GPS-enabled map on their phone’s screen. The goal of the game is to find and capture your target, all without physical contact. Instead, you send them a text message when you’re within a few yards or so---all while you’re also being hunted by another player. Like in StreetWars, the last player standing wins.

Depending on the reach of the game, the marketing potential of PhoneTag may be enticing to brands. Utilizing the game’s real maps, retailers could be integrated into the game by serving as “safe zones” or by offering perks whereby purchases could offer player benefits. Store icons will be able to appear on the game’s maps (for a fee, of course) and brands could also have the opportunity to host their own tournaments, gaining access to the game’s database of registered players.

PhoneTag is scheduled to launch through Amp’d Mobile in the third quarter. Stay tuned to see if the game finds an audience.

One Week Ago Today: Friday

It's the final day here. Time to leave. I'm ready to leave. It was good to come, but it's also good to go.

I meet up with the guys again downstairs. No one is having McDonald's today. I have fruit from the gift shop again.

We get to the airport and my bags make it through the 50 pound limit. I grab a whopper for lunch and a 6" sub for the plane ride back. Dustin and I finish watching "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" on his computer. It's a great movie. Based on a true story. Very scary.

We touch down right on time. Every flight that lands is a good one. We grab our bags and head our seperate ways only to see each other Sunday morning.

It was good to go, but it's great to be home.

One Week Ago Today: Thursday

I wanted to try and make it to the gym this morning. I haven't worked out all week, but I HAVE been doing a lot of walking, so I roll over and try to go back to sleep. But I can't. I keep thinking about KA. I thumb through my program before getting ready and heading downstairs. I don't think I can do McDonald's again this morning. As I head up the stairs to the food court I see some fruit in one of the gift shops. FRUIT! I immediately make a pit stop and get two banannas and one apple. This is nice.

I eat my fruit as I wait for the guys to come straggling in. I meet up with Tony (a volunteer on the media team) and he tells me he went to the gym this morning. He was 30 minutes into his work out when someone from the spa came in and told him it was $20.00 a day to work out in the gym. He said forget it, and walked out. I can't believe it. $20.00 a DAY! That's what most people pay for a MONTH! By this time I'm ready to come home. Everything here is so freakin' expensive. I hate being a tourist. You're ripped off everywhere you go. I'm glad I didn't go to the gym, though.

The only left to see at NAB today is the audio room. Mark says, "We shouldn't be too long. I just want to breeze through and see what's new." Yeah right. When it comes to audio, Mark and "breeze through" don't belong in the same sentence.

This is the smallest and least crowded room of all, but yet we stay there for the whole day. Mark and Dustin talk with Chris (the Yamaha rep that took us out to dinner on Monday, the same Yamaha rep that goes to our church, the same Yamaha rep they can talk to at anytime) for three hours. And the Yamaha booth was at the beginning. It's very easy to get lost in a place like this. Time just gets away from you.

By this time, I've run out of ceral bars and I'm now onto a bag of toasted almonds my wife packed for me. That is lunch.

Hours later, Dustin and I head off to go to the NAB store to look for a shirt. We eventually meet back up with Mark and John at the hotel.

We get in the van and head down the strip to Outback. We park for free (amazing) and have a nice dinner. After that we decide to make our way down to Steve Wynn's lastest dream resort, Wynn Las Vegas, the newest and grandest casino. One of the media guys was telling us about it. "What kind of theme does it have?" I ask. "It's a casino" he says. "Yes, but what style is it?"(all the casinos here have their own theme: Caesar's Palace is like Rome, Excalibur is like medieval knights, The Venitian is a take on Venice, Luxor is themed after Egypt--but apparently not everyone cares about that.) "It's a BIG casino" he says with a dead-pan look. Realizing I'm not getting through I figure I will just find out for myself.

It is unbelievable. It took 800 million dollars to build. Here are some pictures that I found on the internet. They aren't the best quality, but you get a sense of what it's like. Very whimsical and phantasy-esque. Lots of art and color everywhere. This is definately the artist's hotel.

After we take a look around, Mark and I decide to walk back. It's probably about 2 miles back to Excalibur. We decide to take a look into every casino on the way back. He hit Treasure Island, Paris, Bellagio, and MGM Grand before calling it a night.

I head up to my room to pack and make sure I'm still under the 50 pound limit. I'll find out tomorrow.

One Week Ago Today: Wednesday

Rise and shine. It's day three of NAB. The morning starts again at McDonald's. By this time I'm really getting sick of McDonald's. I never eat there, and I'm not a fan of fast food breakfast, but that's all that's around. So I get a Greasy McGriddle, coffee, and water for the convention. I don't know if I can do this for two more days.

We are getting an earlier start this morning than the last two days. We will see the Apple booth today and want to sit in on some tutorials. They are going to talk about podcasting, editing, and everything Apple. Uber exciting.

We get there and I cannot believe my eyes. I cannot describe it in words other than huge. They have a class room section where you can get hands on experience; another section that is four rows of 5 G5 computers with an Apple staff person there ready and able to take on any question; then an auditorium-style section with a stage and big screen where they give their presentations from. Unbelievable. Really.

Dustin and I sit there for three hours and never get out of our seats. (Seats are a luxury at a place like this--but even if we had to stand, we would have been still) We keep sucking all the oxygen out of the room everytime we are shown a short cut or a new way of doing something. We aren't alone though. That is nice.

Lunch is chips and guac at another "booth" from a vendor that we use here at the church. I have walnuts that my wife packed with me and a Diet Coke.

Booths of note are Apple and Adobe today. Again, it's hard to call them booths.

We leave at around 4:00 to get ready for dinner and to see Cirque du Solieil's new show KA. Dinner is Veal Ravioli with Crimini Mushrooms at Wolfgand Puck's Bar and Grill at MGM Grand right outside the KA theatre.

KA, an unprecedented new theatrical show, combines acrobatic performances, martial arts, puppetry, multimedia and pyrotechnics to illustrate the nature of duality. It's the epic saga of separated twins who embark on a perilous journey to fulfill their destinies. KA applies the visual vocabulary of cinema to a dazzling live event that is more about storytelling than any previous Cirque du Soleil production. I have never in my life seen anything more brilliant than KA. For the longest time, Cirque du Solieil has been all about human stunts and acrobatic wonders. Don't get me wrong, they are phenominal, but KA is the first show that technology and acrobatics are euqal. They have blended cinema and live theater seamlessly and defy gravity in every act. The mainstage rotates 360 degrees and also tilts 90 degrees. They have speakers in the seats, so you're in the center of the sound. Incredible. I seriously cannot put it in words how amazing this show is. They have captured magic and transport you to a world unlike any other.

I leave the show in a daze not believing everything I've seen. I buy the soundtrack and a program. This is the best day by far. We go back to the casino for some slots, but I'm done for the night.

One Week Ago Today: Tuesday

I don't think I moved at all last night. Yesterday was a good day, but today promises to be better.

The morning starts off again at McDonald's. A number 2 combo and two bottles of water, please. The water at the convention center is $3.00 a pop, whereas it's only $1.00 here. (Surprising, really.) So we stock up here at McDonald's before heading back over to the convention.

The bus ride is a little quicker today. Only 15 minutes to get through traffic. Today we are in the TV/Film/Video...building (seriously, this convention is so big that each category has its own building). SONY is what I remember the most from NAB today.

It is the biggest "booth" I've seen so far. They have a semi tractor trailer on one end that shows off their on-site production suite. The booth is on the second floor and the whole time I'm thinking how in the world they got this 53' trailer in here.

What's also cool is they have this live set that they've installed where you can play around with SONY's cameras. They have real people sitting in make shift cafes, or garden scenes so you can see what all the cameras can capture. The peoples just sit there and talk silently to each other or read magazines all the while droves of people zoom in on them so close you can see the pores on their nose. Kinda odd when you think about it. I would feel like I was in a zoo being watched and captured by all these strangers. I would feel like I had to do tricks or something.

Lunch is another cereal bar and water.

We leave a little early today because we have to be at Caesars Palace by 1:30. We are going behind the scenes of Celine Dion! It's an unbelievable tour. Construction of the $95 million theater began in Spring of 2001 and was completed when the show opened in March of 2003. The show was created by Franco Dragone who is the dreamer behind all of Cirque du Soleil's shows like Mystere, Saltimbanco, La Nuba, O, and many others. The tour is really cool.

I got to go up onstage and learn about everything that needed to be done to accommodate Celine. For instance: to better help her voice, her doctor said that the ideal condition for her to be in is an environment where the temperature is 75 degrees with 55% humidity. Yes, that's right. They got it 55% once, but she complained that her costumes where sticking to her and the dancers where more sweaty than normal, so they bumped it down to 35%. All along the front of the stage are vents that pump out air that's just right just for her. We see her green room--funny because there's not on spec of green in the place. Uber orange.

A really cool thing about her show is it houses a really big LED screen. Three stories high and 120 feet across. Unbelievable.

After a sound system demo, Mark gets sucked into talking sound with the Vegas guys. Not really knowing anything about sound, I decide to take my own tour of the backstage area. Everything is so organized and clean. I'm really a wuss when it comes to being places that I'm not supposed to be, so I quickly come back onstage.

We leave the 4,100 seat theater and go to dinner. It is 5:00 and we walk right into The Cheesecake Factory. I have never done that. I have the double BBQ bacon burger and a beer. It's amazing after a long day.

We try our luck over at New York New York. I win $23.00 on the nickle slots and I'm done for the night.

One Week Ago Today: Monday

It's my first day at NAB in Las Vegas. (I can't believe how much things have changed here--of course it has--the last time I was here it was 1988.) Breakfast is McDonald's at Excalibur (our hotel/casino). It's the cheapest thing around and it's quick.

A 30 minute bus ride takes us to the Las Vegas Convention center right by the airport. When I get off the bus, I feel like I've entered an ant colony. People, people, people. Going everywhere all at once. And I thought Disney World was bad.

We get inside and I immediately start taking things from every booth I see. Bags, CDs, DVDs, magazines, pens. It didn't help that we were in the music section. I meet back up with the guys and they give me this look as if to say, "rookie" as I fumble with everything I've picked up only after 30 mintues. I realized then this was not a sprint, but a marathon. I needed to pace myself if I wanted to make it through the week (and back on the plane--I was already pushing my 50 pound limit coming out here; not much room for anything else).

Lunch is a south beach cereal bar and a pack of gold fish that I eat in Panasonic's promo section. It feels good to sit down. The presentation lasts only 20 minutes and it's back up and at 'em again. Here's an overview of the day's activities. I didn't see any of this live--I just found it on the internet.

We leave the convention at 4:00 to get ready for dinner. We are being treated by Yamaha. One of the reps goes to our church and is out here. We eat at this Brazilian place that serves 7 different kinds of meat. The servers come out with meat impaled on swords and slice it right on your plate. Kinda fun if you're a carnivore. I don't see much hope for people who are vegitarian.

It's late and we head back to the casino. I lose $20.00 at the nickel slots. I'm done for the night.