I used to be a newspaper columnist, penning one and then two essays a week for 25 years in between plowing, planting and harvesting the second half of a 42-year, ink-stained gig in what is now said to be a “dying profession.” Only it ain’t dead yet.

It just needs the right blood transfusion. And the donors are readers, not publishers. Too many of the latter never worked in trenches where reporting means slime, greed, corruption and more official B.S. to wade through than is at the local waste treatment facility. If these corporate thinkers had been in the daily war, maybe they would understand public thirst for information and how to quench it.

While readers have remained thirsty, publishers have refused to fill the glass, instead offering surveys, think tanks and feel-good, chummy retreats that have not saved newspapers but instead have distracted the front office from what readers and reporters and good editors (not enough of those) have always known: Ever since one fella whispered to another, there’s been news. And gossip. And innuendo. And baloney. And facts closest to the truth as truth can be in this world. But you have to dig for them. And that’s news.

If all this sounds Damon Runyon, well, God bless the fact that “journalism,” a fancy word for newspapering that most scribes wouldn’t wear even on Sundays, is really old-fashioned, “Front Page” legwork –

Cultivating sources and jumping into an investigative dig worthy of Sherlock Holmes. If there is also the soul of a self-deprecating street bum, where all the goodness of humankind can reside, the reporter is the better for it. And so is the reader.

Digging and lots of new, not rehashed, reporting gives us news, and news, whether it’s what the first fella said to the second fella, or if it’s about the town or school board meeting, or the Yankees, or the president, well, it’s all information. And people crave information.

The transfusion that is ready for newspapers is the time, the mind, the heart, the soul readers are willing to give those who gather and report the news. People will spurt blood to find out what is happening. They want the dirt, the scandal. They also want the think piece that analyzes matters. They want the essayist who makes the highs and lows of life vibrate, resonating in hearts and minds and bones in ways the columnist can express but the reader cannot.

People – the readers – whether they are looking at a printed tabloid or broadsheet or the Internet or the TV news or Twitter or Facebook, want news. They want  “quality, balanced, well-written pieces (that) refrain from blurring the lines between factual news reporting and opinion/agenda/promotion views,” as one Colorado reader puts it.

Want to save newspapers? Use the blood that readers will give willingly. Go back to digging out the news and then fully reporting that, written by guys and gals who feel newspapering from their toes up, left alone by the front office to do their thing.

If we had had real news from a full, leave-them-alone reporting staff in the past two decades instead of spending the bank balance on surveys and page redesign and trendy fluff pieces, maybe the current economic debacle would have been derailed by investigative stories. Or war. Or G.M.’s troubles. Or dysfunctional government that is bedded by lobbyists.

People want the news, and only those who give it to them, in whatever and every way they want it, will survive. They will thrive, actually.

Arthur H. Gunther III is retired as editorial page editor and columnist of The Journal-News, a daily in Nyack, N.Y. He writes regularly at columnrule.blogspot.com

In my years working in television programming, I received literally thousands of program pitches, from everyone from my neighbors to my personal hero in programming, Brandon Tartikoff. I always tried to listen respectfully, and treat the people pitching the idea as I would want to be treated. I would remind myself that even though I might have heard this idea a hundred times, the person pitching it didn’t know that.

One question would irritate me to a point where I couldn’t help but show it. That was, “How do I know you won’t steal my idea?” Usually I would respond, “if you’re that worried about it, don’t tell me the idea.” Occasionally, that would stop the pitch in its tracks, and I would get a half hour of my life back.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s a stolen idea, and what’s just popular imitation. For example, I might think it’s a good idea to launch a series about an adolescent with magical powers. That describes both the Harry Potter series and the Percy Jackson series. Were these stolen ideas? Of course not. While they both can be described broadly the same way, they differ in thousands of different details.

That’s the best way to protect your idea. Write it down and make it as detailed as possible. Don’t wait for someone at a television company to buy it before you create it. For example, you can copyright your novel about a magical boy in Brooklyn who saves the city; you have no protection if you’re just walking into someone’s office telling them you’d like to write a movie about that topic.

Of course, if you already have a track record in the business, you don’t have to finish a piece before you sell your idea. Executives want to do business with you if you have a history or writing hit films or novels. If you’re like most of us, trying to get our ideas a hearing, you have more to prove.

Protect yourself by turning your idea into a property. JK Rowling didn’t sell the idea of writing a book about a young wizard named Harry Potter, she wrote the book first and sold that. So get busy.

Peter M. Gordon is a writer, public speaker, and media consultant in Orlando, FL.

At 8:45p Sunday evening, WABC-TV and Cablevision announced an “agreement in principal” which averted a crisis for both parties allowing the Oscars to be carried by Cablevision at 9p Sunday night.

by Dave Zornow

WABC-TV, New York has removed their signal from Cablevision’s lineup blacking out all of the Disney-owned station’s programming including tonight’s broadcast of the Academy Awards.

The banner headline on the station’s Website, SaveABC7.com, says “Cablevision betrays their customers again! First HGTV and Food Network, now ABC7.”

Cablevision’s Website counters: “The definition of corporate greed: ABC demanding $40 million for WABC-7.”

Just like the health care debate, the screaming obscures the facts. Until cooler heads prevail, the three million Cablevision subs in the NY metro can go to a neighbor’s house and watch the Oscars on Verizon’s FiOS, Time Warner, Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network or online at ABC.com or Hulu.com.

Here is a profile of the leading characters for today’s performance.

Q: I’m going to miss Good Eats AND The Oscars? How can this be? TV is supposed to be free!

A: When SaveABC7.com says “First HGTV and Food Network, now ABC7″ they are refering to a squabble earlier this year between Scripps Networks and Cablevision where Scripps’ channels were off the air for three weeks in Cablevision homes. WABC’s implies that Cablevision no longer carries HGTV and Food network. This is incorrect.

Also remember that there is no such thing as free TV. WABC, Cablevision and everyone else on the dial makes money by promising advertisers that you will be there to view their commercials. Although you may not think you are paying to watch TV — in the eyes of media buyers and sellers — your attention is a valuable commodity for which billions of dollars are paid each year nationally.

Q: Why is this happening now?

A: FCC rules say that a station can request compensation OR grant retransmission consent in exchange for a preferred channel position. This agreement, negotiated on a system by system basis, is up for renewal every three years.

Q: So, if WABC already has a preferred position (Channel 7), why are they asking for money, too?

A: Good question. WABC is playing hardball for a $40 million increase on top of the $200 million which Cablevision says they already pay Disney. WABC says disputes these figures.

There’s alot of information we don’t know — and will never know, either. Disney’s cable channels include ESPN channels, ABC Family and The Disney Channel. Over time, Disney has received carriage of new channels — and better channel positions — as part of these negotiations.

It’s possible that the $200 million which Cablevision says that it now “pays” is the calculated value of all of these negotiated concessions. We don’t know. But it’s reasonable to assume that Cablevision has been paying cash as well as giving up other concessions to Disney for carrying WABC-TV. Things which prior to today Disney felt had value.

Q: Certainly WABC pays a lot for these programs. Shouldn’t Cablevision should pay its fair share?

A: It is unlikely that WABC-TV pays anything for the programming it receives from the ABC Television Network. In fact, many stations in the country are paid by the ABC, CBS and NBC to carry network programs in a decades long practice called “compensation.” Because WABC-TV is an owned and operated station of the ABC Television network, it isn’t clear if they receive cash compensation to carry programming from their corporate parent.

Q: If Cablevision decides to pay more for WABC-TV, will my cable bill go up?

A: Here’s the FCC’s answer: “In return for allowing a cable system to carry its signal, a television station may require the payment of a fee or other consideration. Any new or additional costs incurred as a result of retransmission consent agreements may be passed through to cable subscribers.”

Q: If WABC-TV only makes money when they run commercials, won’t they be hurting themselves by yanking the Oscars and all of their other programs from three million households in the biggest TV market in the US?

A: WABC-TV and the ABC Television network have promised advertisers a certain “delivery” of demographic viewers to tonight’s Oscar broadcast. If tomorrow’s Nielsen results show they fell short, they will owe “make-goods” (future no-charge commercials) or cash back. This is an issue for both the local station and the ABC Television network.

Q: So if Cablevision subscribers are angry and Disney advertisers will be angry with WABC-TV, why are they doing this?

A: Good question. This is the grown-up version of adolescents daring each other to see who can hold their hand over an open flame for the longest amount of time. But in this game, Cablevision, ABC and Oscar fans are all going to get burnt by this episode of “As The Media Turns.”

Sources: FCC, SaveABC7.com, Cablevision
See also: NYT 3/7/2010

This story was originally posted on NyackNewsAndViews.com

The upcoming Academy Awards broadcast on ABC is poised to do well in the ratings. The controversial decision to expand the Best Picture category from 5 to 10 films might frustrate purists, but it should also draw additional viewers.

Oscar ratings tend to fluctuate a bit from year to year, often based on whether higher- or lower-profile films receive the most attention. It’s no coincidence that the lowest rated broadcasts tend to be in years when less popular movies dominate the Best Picture nominees.

Over the past 10 years, two of the lowest rated broadcasts were the last two. Last year’s winner, Slumdog Millionaire, was up against Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, and The Reader – all quality movies, but not exactly major box office hits. Likewise, the previous year had No Country for Old Men facing off against Juno, Atonement, Michael Clayton, and There Will Be Blood.

Had last year’s nominees also included Dark Night, ratings undoubtedly would have been higher. If there were five nominees this year, they might have been The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, and An Education. How many would have tuned in? Making room for crowd pleasers like Avatar, District 9, Up, The Blind Side, and Up in the Air will defintitely draw in more viewers. Probably most people that are fairly regular moviegoers have seen at least one or two of these. Now some might say Avatar would have made it anyway. But given that the critical and moviegoer blockbuster, Dark Night didn’t make the cut last year, I’m not sure Avatar would have this year.

Another factor that may contribute to high ratings is that there seems to be a renewed national appetite for big event programming. Recent strong ratings for the Super Bowl, some high-profile award shows, and the Winter Olympics seem to indicate a trend. Perhaps in this economy, more people are staying home and watching television. Maybe families are searching for primetime shows they can watch together (roughly 80% of homes only have one TV turned on during primetime). Or maybe social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are enabling more real-time shared viewing experiences, which the fragmentation of TV viewing in a 200+ channel environment has made all too rare.

As usual, the Academy Awards will continue to be an excellent platform for advertisers. It has significantly less commercial clutter than the typical primetime series. Last year, only 18% of the broadcast contained commercials (national, local, promos, and billboards). The average regularly scheduled primetime series, by comparison, has roughly 28% devoted to commercials/promos.

As I mentioned in my Winter Olympics analysis, Nielsen has a little known rule that it only measures national audiences up to the final national commercial. Last year, the final half hour of the Academy Awards, when three of the four major awards – Best Actress, Actor, and Picture – were handed out, was not rated by Nielsen.

The last national commercial was at 11:25pm. Any subsequent programming was not included in the program’s average ratings. ABC tries to keep viewers tuned in for a three and a half hour broadcast by holding back the biggest awards until the end, and then Nielsen doesn’t report most of it. If they moved these three awards to 10:30pm instead of 11:30pm, national ratings would undoubtedly improve.

A 1996 and 2007 recipient of Ad Age’s Media Maven award, Steve Sternberg has more than 20 years of experience analyzing and reporting on television and programming and video viewing trends for major advertising/media agencies. Read more from Steve at The Sternberg Report.

Nielsen’s 2009 revenue was flat — albeit $4.8 billion worldwide. Operating income fell dropped 72 percent to $116 million from $421 million in 2008 mostly due to restructuring and accounting charges.

During 2009 Nielsen sold it’s EDI movie measurement service to Rentrak and a handful of B-to-B magazines in the entertainment business including Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews, Hollywood Reporter and Billboard. Additionally, Nielsen pulled the plug on radio industry bible Radio And Records last June.

In March 2009, the company announced plans to cut 1600 jobs or about five percent of its headcount.

Sources: Crain’s NY, 3/30/2009, Yahoo News, Mediabistro, 6/4/2009, NY Times 12/10/2009

As many observers and bloggers have noted, this year’s Super Bowl commercials featured an unusual number of henpecked men.

In an ad for Chrysler’s Dodge Charger, a male voiceover recites a long list of husbandly duties, including putting down the toilet seat and carrying his wife’s lip balm, while blank-faced men stare mutely at the camera. At the end, the speaker concludes that, after doing so many good deeds, he deserves to get the car he wants.

If the commercials revealed that guys are feeling a bit uneasy about their gender’s position, new studies show that they have good reason to think they are living in a woman’s world.

The Pew Research Center recently reported that more women now have higher incomes than their husbands than in 1970. In 2007, 22 percent of women out-earned their husbands, compared to just 4 percent in 1970. Paul Fucito, spokesman for the Pew Center said, “Men now are increasingly likely to marry wives with more education and income than they have, and the reverse is true for women.”

Thanks to the recent recession, which put more men than women out of work, the number of female breadwinners has probably increased even further. Construction and manufacturing, both of which are still predominately male industries, were both hit hard by the downturn. In December, 11 percent of men were unemployed, compared to just 8.8 percent of women.

The growth of female economic power is likely to continue, as more women than men pursue higher education. According to a recent report by the American Council on Education, for nearly the past decade women have consistently represented about 57 percent of undergraduate enrollments at American colleges. Women earn more master’s degrees than men and earn just as many professional and doctoral degrees.

Fortunately, if the Super Bowl ads are any indicator, men at least have a sense of humor about their changing situation. Advertising agencies were betting that guys whose wives hold the purse strings would be willing to laugh about it.

One spot, however, did strike me as having a nasty undertone. In the FloTV ad a man accompanies a woman on a shopping trip. He stands with a bra draped over his shoulder at the lingerie store and reluctantly sniffs candles in the housewares department. At the end of the commercial, a narrator tells him to “change out of that skirt.”

Rather than inviting us to laugh along with the hapless man, FloTV portrays his position as womanly and, by the commercial’s logic, therefore degrading. The commercial suggested that, while it would be fitting for a skirt-wearing woman to cater to her mate’s whims, a man should not let himself be put in that position.

But most of the ads took a good-natured approach to the bad times that have been particularly bad for men. Underneath the ribbing, it seems, most of today’s men appreciate how much worse off they would be without the accomplished women in their lives. And if they have any complaints, they usually keep them private.

My wife sometimes tells me to “just smile and nod” when voicing my opinion is going to get me into trouble. On my better days, I have enough sense to take her advice. It looks like I have a lot of company.

Larry Elkin is President and Founder of Palisades Hudson Financial Group LLC.

The 2010 Super Bowl set a ratings record with 106.5 million people tuned into the Big Game. About 7 in 10 U.S. households watching TV on Super Sunday watched the Bowl averaging a 68 percent share of viewing.

Which is huge, but it isn’t everyone. What were the other 32 percent of football-agnostic people watching? How does the rest of broadcast and cable compete with most the watched telecast of all time?

For the most part, competitors treat the Super Bowl like most of us handle the recession. You muddle along as best as you can and hope it’s over quickly.

“You’re fighting for a much smaller piece of the pie. It’s not worth trying to counter program,” says Peter Gordon, former head of programming for The Golf Channel. “It’s not worth putting out your killer key lime pie when you’ll get the same viewers for apple pie.”

More than 30 percent of all TV viewing is too big an audience for some competitors to dismiss. There have been big successes during the Super Bowl halftime – but none recently. In 1993, In Fox’s Living Color lured 20 million viewers away from the Super Bowl with a special football-themed parody.

Media consultant and former head of Fox cable research Steve Leblang says successful counter programming needs to reach a broad audience. “General entertainment networks such as TNT and USA will run older skewing drama marathons because there is a larger percent of viewers that tend to be less interested in the Super Bowl and sports in general,” he says.

One tried and true strategy is to rerun tried and true TV classics. This year, ABC Family ran The Sound of Music opposite the Super Bowl with modest results – about what was expected when you go up against the Big Game. The hills may still have been alive – but they delivered about 25 percent less than its usual audience.

“It’s not that programmers lay down,” says Gordon. “It’s more like recognizing reality.” However, some channels literally lay down. Or encourage their “talent” to do so.

Animal Planet aired the 6^th Annual Puppy Bowl on Super Bowl Sunday, an event filled with “dogged defense, puppy penalties and Fido first downs,” starring pups from animal shelters. Announcers provided the football-like play-by-play for the on the field animal play.

“We were very pleased with the performance – it did extremely well both on TV and online,” says Lauren Goodson Machen, senior research director at Discovery’s Animal Planet. She says Animalplanet.com broke its previous record for unique visitors on Super Sunday, counting 56 percent higher traffic than last year’s Puppy Bowl.

Machen says despite the CBS’ record-breaking Super Bowl delivery, this year’s TV household Puppy Bowl rating was on par with last year. Which doesn’t surprise media consultant Leblang. “Networks that are the most successful are reaching an underserviced demo niche.”

Even on Super Bowl Sunday there’s something on the tube for everyone. Where some viewers go gaga over Drew Brees, others go “aaahhh” over bunny rabbit cheerleaders and a blimp piloted by hamsters.

Sources: blog.nielsen.com, Animal Planet, Wikipedia

This article was originally published on Associated Content.

Miami Beach, FL, Feb 5 — South Beach is ground zero for the largest media event on the planet this weekend, Super Bowl XLIV.  Fans are cranked to see the team from the 25th ranked TV market battle the underdog from the 51st largest DMA. Together, the faithful in these TV markets represent little less than 1.5 percent of all US TV households.

(Yawn).

But it is far from a “yawn” for marketers who have committed millions in ad spending and local promotions, not to mention the thousands of fans that flock to South Florida for Super Bowl festivities. The NFL — and their licensed sponsors — have literally taken over the beach in Miami. Pepsi and DirecTV have each erected temporary stadiums on the beach for musical events with space at each venue for 8500+ fans.

Marketers with beachfront exhibits hoping to cash in on pre-bowl traffic include typical sports advertisers like GMC trucks, Comcast, McDonalds and Bridgestone Tires.  One less likely advertiser has placed ten 6-foot high orange aluminum boxes with 15 foot vertical poles running from 7th to 10th streets along Ocean Drive. They form an eye catching clothes line — with each box emblazoned with the Tide laundry detergent logo.

What’s a women oriented product like Tide doing in the middle of an NFL event?

“When I look around, I don’t see just men here for the Super Bowl. I see woman, children, families and seniors, too,” says Mandy Treeby, Proctor and Gamble’s brand manager for Tide. “Most people here aren’t even going to the game,” she says. “Instead, they are here for the event.”

Event organizers say up to 250,000 people will descend on the South Florida for the Super Bowl. Tide hopes to make the most of that foot traffic, introducing their new “Style is an Option. Clean is Not” ad campaign.

P&G says the campaign is a celebration of personal style. People need to have a sense of pride and dignity knowing what they wear is clean. “Tide does a lot more than keep clothes looking their best,” says Suzanne Watson, associate marketing director for Tide North America.  “Tide celebrates people’s diverse sense of style and their self-expression.”

“We’re not targeting the Super Bowl as much as we are creating a presence in South Beach,” says Treeby. “People are coming to Miami from all over the country.  There’s a buzz here. The Super Bowl is a celebration of style — it’s a great opportunity to introduce our new campaign.”

“Tide’s Mile of Clean Style,” produced by the Gigunda Group,  includes a fashion runway where visitors can be photographed and “make their own style statement” by walking or dancing down the runway.  The brand is also doing its part for Haiti relief efforts by giving the profits from the sale of Tide vintage t-shirts, sold from their mobile laundry Loads Of Hope truck, previously deployed to help displaced Hurricane Katrina families.

With all eyes on Miami for Super Bowl XLIV, Gigunda Group went the extra mile ’s8211; airing some clean laundry on a blocks-long clothesline to raise money and awareness for those in need.

Treeby says, “Tide has been overwhelmed with the traffic at their display; we are getting great engagement from everyone who visits.”

Statistically speaking, the Mac and the Republican leadership have alot in common.

MacDailyNews’ recent headline “Apple Mac owns 90% market share for ‘premium’ PCs costing over $1,000″ comes as quite a shock to anyone who spent the first 10 years of their Mac ownership being ridiculed by PC friends and IT departments.

I remember the day when an IT director for a progressive media company refused my request for a friendly and fuzzy early Mac so my research department could crank out something more client friendly than what was available on our IBM PS/2 running Lotus 1-2-3 and printing on a dot matrix printer. “Thou shalt not use the ‘M’ word here,” she told me.

Too bad I wasn’t working at some cutting edge cool place like MTV. Wait, come to think of it I WAS working at MTV. Which just shows you how far Mac acceptance in the marketplace has come.

But I digress from the 90 percent statistic shocker. “Nine out of 10 premium PCs purchased from US retail brick-and-mortar stores or online sites (including major chains and Apple Store) during [the] fourth quarter was a Mac,” says Joe Wilcox from BetaNews.

It’s incredible and not quite believable that the company that had a perennial sub 10 percent share of sales currently is responsible for 9 out of ten PCs sold. It’s also not quite true, either. The numbers aren’t flawed. It’s the base that’s in question.

Once upon a time, you needed to spend close to $3,000 for a state of the art PC. Every year the specs would change…but the price would be more-or-less the same. Over the last ten years things gradually changed where each time you bought a new PC you got more — literally for less. Now you can buy a middle of the market machine for less than $1000.

So it’s not so amazing that Apple dominates the $1,000 and up market. The twin shockers here are how cheap it is to buy a PC and how Apple has consistently received a premium price (for delivering, arguably, a premium product) while the margins on Windows machines have steadily declined.

This is a trick that researchers and marketers know well. If you don’t have a good story against total the total market, change the base to something that’s more relevant to the target which tells a better story.

Sometimes, researchers are called to task for “manipulating the base” to tell that better story. As it happens, politicians frequently employ the same trick although they rarely get called out for this behavior.

This week, conservatives and Republican leaders are screaming about a $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2011, the largest peace time budget in history. Deficits are projected to shoot up to a record $1.6 trillion this year. When the late Senator Everett Dirksen once mused “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money,” he never could have imagined that some day we’d have a multi-trillion dollar national deficit.

But conservative leaders are doing one worse than eager researchers. By disregarding the $1.4 billion deficit Obama inherited in addition to two wars, a teetering banking system, failing automakers and soaring unemployment, they aren’t just manipulating their numbers, they are manipulating their followers, too.

Without context, Apple’s 90 percent share is impressive but meaningless. The same can be said for a deficit so huge it defies comprehension. It’s easy to say “we can’t afford a $1.6 trillion deficit.” But we couldn’t afford the wars and Medicare Prescription Drug bill that helped wiped out the surpluses at the start of the last decade.

Content is king and talking points to the base have their place.  But context is the glue that holds it all together.

Apple’s iPad, a supersized iPhone tablet computer, has inspired hope and fear from print publishers as well as ample discussion about how this latest innovation will save or slay magazines and newspapers. Here’s a 2005 flashback that presaged today’s announcement.

While relaxing with a good book and my iPod this weekend, I drifted off to sleep. And I had an amazing dream.

It was one of those dreams that spring from your last conscious thought. I had been thinking about the new video iPod and what a holiday great gift it would make. I’d also just read about the Washington Post posting their video podcasts on the iTunes Web site. I mused about how you could now get almost any conceivable content from almost any media online….

In my dream it was all true. Even magazines, the mother lode of great content, were now available in iTunes. I dreamed that I could get editorial content packaged like cable – buying a tier of 100 titles for a reasonable $30 a month which included “gotta have” books bundled with “might be nice to read ones,” too. It was all there to read online, on a PDA, a notebook or a video iPod.

In my dream, magazines publishers decided to work together because they found a rising tide of incremental revenue really did lift all boats. And by looking beyond the covers, newsstands sales, circulation and glossy pages by which they have traditionally defined themselves, they had created a new revenue stream that didn’t cannibalize their current subscriber base. Furthermore, these media visionaries had kindled* a new reading boom in America by stealing an idea from amazon.com. By including “people like you have also read” recommendations in their online iTunes storefront, magazine publishers had increased customer satisfaction, reduced churn and extended their brands into a new space. The first mass media was reborn, iTuning into new audiences while simultaneously lowering production and distribution costs. Ad sales profited too, as targeted banner ads, based on the interests I demonstrated in previous editorial selections, were included alongside the online copy.

I suddenly awoke and realized it was all just a dream. I rubbed my eyes and smiled recalling my short-lived editorial adventure. Then I turned my attention back to the book I had been reading before falling asleep, “The Gilded Dinosaur.”

Dave Zornow is president of TNG Research, a media research and applications development company that works with media sellers and research providers.  This story was originally published in the Cynopsis:Weekender newsletter, 11/3/05

* Editor’s note: I believe the use of the word “kindle-d” in this Nov, 2005 article about making magazine content more mobile was random. But it is funny how things turn out!