Anti-Facebook viral anthem to take web by storm

The backlash against Facebook appears to be growing if this humorous viral is anything to go by. It lists all of the reasons why the social networking site has becoming so annoying and looks set to take the web by storm.

It has been produced by Rebel Virals, the joint venture between Aspect Film and integrated agency Mason Zimbler, to promote the agency on the back of the current climate of anti-application angst.

It's pretty funny and, with a cast of not quite thousands but quite a few, it works its way through Facebook's long list of ills.

It begins with the line: "Facebook is a crime when people have too much time; Sending me requests, IQ and Brain Tests; It's no fucking joke; I don't like to Super Poke".

The anti-Facebook anthem goes on to work its way creatively through the zillions of applications to the endless quizzes and tests that applications are received for.

It follows the report last week that Facebook suffered a decline in unique users in the UK for the first time since July 2006, falling 5% to 8.5m users in January, although the social networking site remains the most popular in the UK according to Nielsen.

I blogged on this last week and the post attracted, as you would expect, quite a few comments. What I picked up on then as did a number of people commenting was that specialist social networking sites are the future, or part of it along with generic sites with Facebook.

That said, Facebook isn't going anywhere and as someone else put it last week while many have shut their accounts most will keep them going, but visit less frequently.

This Rebel Virals-produced piece simply further articulates how we're all quickly falling out of love with this particular side of social networking and moving on.

Of course, it is fair to point out again that Facebook denies experiencing a drop in their unique users and said it has seen a rise in active users month on month and currently claims 8.3m active users in the UK up by around 600,000 on the 7.7m users recorded in December.

This particular creation was the work of David Sloly and David Watson at Rebel Virals.

Banishing plastic bags - supermarkets must act

It's a huge environmental issues and major supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsbury have to take a lead, but show no signs of doing so. The Daily Mail today features a major nine-page report on the blight of plastic carrier bags and what must be done to stop them.

The Daily Mail makes an effort to catalogue the environmental impact juxtaposing pictures of a typical British family, heading home from the supermarket laden with plastic bags packed full of the weekly supermarket shop, and a haunting image of a sea turtle, thousands of miles away, struggling through the deep ocean waters as discarded plastic bags wrap themselves around its flippers and body.

The paper reports that these animals are dying in alarming numbers because they mistake the flimsy translucent bags for jellyfish. They swallow them and die.

Supermarkets should be charging for new bags as they do in Ireland. I really can not understand why the government here has not followed the Irish model.

In 2002, the Irish government introduced a bag tax, currently 16p, which led to a 90% reduction in the use of bags.

In France, there is activity also. A year ago, after shopper pressure the biggest supermarkets in France imposed a ban on free carriers. They now charge between 2p and 42p for reusable bags. Two pence is far too cheap, but the action has removed millions of free bags from high streets with a French government ban planned for 2010.

The Daily Mail report says that 13bn free single-use plastic bags are dished out by Britain's high street stores every year. It's shocking. People simply would not take them if they had to pay 10p a bag. It is the cheapness that makes them so disposable and why you see people taking half a dozen at a time twice a week.

The life span of a typically Tesco carrier bag is 20 minutes. They are then thrown out and game over. But while their use is 20 minutes their life span is as long as 1,000 years. Generation after generation will have to deal with the impact of these bags, which rot very slowly away.

The Daily Mail has launched its Banish the Bags campaign in an effort to rid the country of these single-use plastic bags and encourage people to use alternative such as those made from cloth and the traditional shopping basket.

There is some change, but it is small beer. Marks & Spencer has run trials in Northern Ireland and the South-West, where shoppers are charged 5p for each carrier bag. Still not enough. Ikea and discount outlets Aldi and Lidl also charges, but it means nothing if Tesco or Sainsbury's don't get off their highly profitable backsides and act.

Tesco could use the saved bags to bury the loot that it has apparently been tucking away.

It has apparently, according to a report in The Guardian today, created an elaborate corporate structure involving offshore tax havens centring on the Cayman Islands, which enables it to avoid paying what could be up to £1bn of tax on profits from the sale of its UK properties.

Talking of Matt Damon and YouTube

…as if his ad-skipping Bourne performance was not enough, Matt Damon has been creating huge comedy waves on YouTube with Sarah Silverman and pulling in millions in the process. I saw this a while ago, but thought would tie this all in a long round about as Google's video service looks at maximising ad revenues.

You're going to have to excuse the language on this one, but I am talking about the hilarious video music featuring Sarah Silverman and Matt Damon singing 'I'm fuckin' Matt Damon' which has been watched by 8m people.

If you don't know the story, here's the shortish version, which began with Silverman's boyfriend the US chat show host Jimmy Kimmel.

Kimmel used to joke on his ABC show at the end "Apologies to Matt Damon, but we ran out of time," even though the actor was never scheduled to appear.

Eventually in September 2006 when Damon finally appeared as a guest, and you guessed, only to have his slot cut short at the end the show and the actor staging a mock tantrum and storming off the set.

Silverman then made a video earlier this month 'I'm fuckin' Matt Damon', which became a massive hit on ABC.com and YouTube.

Kimmel fired back with a video of his own starring Damon's friend Ben Affleck called 'I'm fucking Ben Affleck'.



This has also been watched by millions. Granted they have stars in them, but (and really this was where I was going anyway before I got sidetracked by the Silverman video) they present a huge and growing problem for TV networks.

Google has know this for ages, but has not done a great deal about it. Now that is changing and it is starting to work on its strategy to maximise online video advertising because of the huge potential.

That revenue does not simply, as we all know, centre around celebrities although that is clearly bankable. Just look at those videos and the numbers they have pulled in.

It is about videos being created by all of us. For instance, we covered a story last week that put a global value on videoclip websites of $31bn.

A 216-second clip alone of a Canadian girl dancing with a hula-hoop on another site clipstar.com is estimated to be costing the worldwide TV and traditional media markets $222,480, according to a report by MediaTel. This breaks down to $1,030 a second, a figure unheard of a decade ago.

It is estimated that spending on online advertising is growing between 30% to 60% according to research and by next year it is predicted to outstrip television advertising spend in the UK by up to £3.5bn, with the rest of the world not far behind.

This is a serious problem for TV, already under assault from ad skipping, and online videos are eating further and further into that. Advertisers want to be where their ads are being watched, and advertising around such killer content can produce great results and give the kind of traffic that advertisers can simply not win elsewhere. In December alone, the amount of time spent watching video online grew 34% last year.

Now Google, which despite dominating the space, has yet to really make money out of online video, plans to sell ads on videos that appear outside of YouTube and it also plans clickable video ads on the side of its own search results pages.

What has already happened to newspapers, which have been deserted by classified advertising and the US newspaper industry has been hit with thousands losing their jobs, could start to happen to TV. It might not happen slowly, but if firms like Google and others can get it right my guess is that it will speed up very quickly. From 0 to Craig's List in no time flat.

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FT begins niche social networking

Last week, while blogging on Facebook, and the fall in interest in it, the rise of niche social networking sites seemed to be one obvious knock-on effect of that and today the Financial Times has confirmed just that with a launch of its niche network.The FT has announced it is to launch an exclusive social network service for executives working in the media and technology industries.

It's an obvious move for the FT and it is the first media company in the UK to push ahead with such plans. I fully expect others will launch similar initiates (if not, they should be), building networks around small, like-minded communities.

The FT's service is clearly aimed at the top end of the market with a £1,700 price tag, but there is quite a lot on offer for your money, with not just the ability to contact fellow members, but free passes for any FT Global Conferences and Events portfolio as well as face-to-face networking events.

The FT says that the Telecoms Media and Technology Executive Membership Forum is the first in a series of membership forums it plans to launch with plans for the luxury goods and property sectors to follow later this year.

There is no reason why other newspaper groups could not do it. You could, for instance, easily imagine the Guardian launching something similar, bringing together a number of areas where it is strong, such as education, the public sector, media and even politics.

It's the kind of thing you can imagine B2B publishers would be interested in also, as well as many other groups.

In the professional sector, the FT could pose a challenge for services like Linked In, but it seems more complimentary and not necessarily in any way exclusive. Oddly enough Linked In had an announcement of its own today with a mobile version of its professional social network in six languages. Among other things, it will make it easier for people to add new contacts and find out information about people while on the move.

Is Facebook over?

I don't mean completely over, but a little bit. The flash mob has moved on, weighed down by vampire and movie quiz knowledge. That seems to be what today's statistics are showing as for the first time the numbers head down and not up.
As we reported on Brand Republic earlier, Facebook has suffered a decline in unique users in the UK for the first time since July 2006, falling 5% to 8.5m users, according to Nielsen Online.

It is not the first fall. I imagine next month will see another drop although Facebook says the figures do not match with its own. The drop comes after numerous articles in magazines and newspapers where journalists talk about their new -found disaffection for 2007's social media phenomenon.

I know, only 2007. It seems so much longer ago. Maybe social networking years are like dog years and, you know, last year we all spent seven years social networking and trying to win as many friends as possible and sign up for the most stupid applications ever, many of which never got used.

The research says people are tiring of the sites and of Facebook in particularly. There have been posts on the Brand Republic forums about this, as well as the many articles about people cancelling their accounts. The most recent I read was in the Sunday Times Style section at the weekend.

I still use mine quite a bit, but not as much as that first rush, but I also use it for work as we tend to write about it so, while quite bored of the applications and invitations to quiz or take tests, I won't be deleting my account.

I have sort of given up tracking people down and adding friends as I realise that many of the people I diligently found or got found by I don't have a relationship with beyond being Facebook pals.

That said, I have already cancelled my MySpace account as I never looked at it and the idea of lots of personal data floating around the webverse is an increasingly uncomfortable one.

All this said, I'm sure that social media will continue to flourish and mutate with new sites and new adaptations arriving on the scene. We reported today about the arrival of Studyvox, a social networking site for students.

This could almost be seen as a reaction against the generic nature of sites likes Facebook, which ironically started out as a site for students. I'm sure it is not the first to focus on niche communities.

This is where sites like Brand Republic itself should be if they continue to progress extending the natural community of readers and industry figures.

So are you parting company with Facebook or hanging around, but just declining those invitations to become a dark Lord of the Sith or a Jedi Knight (OK, I admit I signed up for this, but could never get it to work... whatever work means)?

Virgin 1 to break out with Sarah Connor

I got very excited last night when I got to see the first episode of the 'Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles', which looks it will be giving Virgin 1 its first hit later this week.

Despite the distractions of people walking around in Terminator make-up and bulky blokes dressed in camouflage, ski masks and armed with assault rifles, I remained glued to the screen.

Lena Headey has all the things that made Linda Hamilton so good on the big screen. She is intense and expressive and looked suitably good with a pump action shotgun to make you wonder why the American press started complaining a while back that she is too skinny.

She plays the woman on the edge and ready to run perfectly, over slightly prickly and protective.

It packed an awful lot in with classroom shootouts, bank break-ins, numerous cars written off as the search to find and destroy the SkyNet computer system gets under way anew. It's a nice touch having the Arnie protecting Terminator role go to a woman in Summer Glau, giving a new dynamic to story.



It ignores everything that happened in the not all that great Terminator 3 movie (the one that James Cameron/Linda Hamilton were not involved in) and gives plenty of nods to 'T2 Judgement Day'.

The classic lines are there from "Come with me if you want to live" and a few Terminator one-liners -- although it must be said that none quite carry the same weight or impact uttered as they are in Standard American English rather than English with a deep Austrian accent. Small gripe.

It has in its DNA the makings of high-quality science fiction, which means it could win a wide audience, which it achieved in its first outing on Fox in the US where it pulled in 18m, stretching beyond geeks and fan boys to the general TV watching audience.

The numbers will be interesting for Virgin Media and its newish entertainment channel, and Sky One rival, Virgin 1, which could do with some must -watch programming.

It has had shows that have drawn critical praise in 'The Riches', which didn't do anything for me, but other than that it seems to have lots of programming that previously appeared on sister Virgin Media channel Bravo. Things like the David Mamet created 'The Unit' and loads of 'Star Trek', which all used to live on Sky One (not sure about that, it doesn't really help to distinguish the channel in the minds of media buyers).

The only problem 'Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles' that I can see, having seen its first episode, is going to be keeping up the quality.

Kitt returns to TV and the Ford car is the star

NBC pulled in almost 13m for the another revamped TV show and the return of 'Knight Rider'. No David Hasselhoff to speak of (a cameo appearance) and this time around no Pontiac Trans Am, but Ford Mustang Shelby instead, and apparently the car is the star in this remake.

The show pulled in 12.7m viewers, which is no mean feat for a telemovie, starring an unknown Justin Bruening (a former army ranger and failed race car driver) as the new Mike and Val Kilmer as the voice of KITT -- although clearly not KITT as KITT was a 1980s Trans Am.

I'm not sure what the attraction is. I vaguely remember watching on Saturday evenings, but could never get that worked up about a talking car that seemed to drive around small dusty towns. But clearly someone has a shrine to this show, as it's the third effort at reviving it. The two previous shots were apparently woeful -- 'Knight Rider 2000' and the apparently worse still 'Team Knight Rider'. Besides everyone knows there is only one Team and if you can find them maybe you can get them back on TV instead.

The numbers look good and NBC is said to be weighing up the idea of a series, but not everyone was impressed, with fans dubbing the show boring on message boards and critics like TV Guide being no kinder with one or two calling it nothing more than an extended Ford commercial.

"The new (more or less) Knight Rider wasn't really a show, more like the longest car ad in human memory. Almost made you pine for the good old days of the writers' strike."

While Variety described it as "two hours that mostly amount to watching two people that once dated drive around together in a conspicuously product-placed Ford Mustang" .



Well good news for Ford if no one else -- it also bought ads in all the breaks. It won a bidding war to replace the General Motors original. Although, ironically in a comes around goes around kind of way, the Trans Am was inspired by the original Ford Mustang.

Mary McNamara, of The Los Angeles Times, criticised the choice of Kilmer as the voice of Kitt and said the film was "stuck in the 80s", while another said he was channelling Spock. And it's totally true, listen for yourself. Kilmer even utters the line: "I am incapable of happiness, but I will say it seems logical you are here." Clearly, Leonard Nimoy was busy.

You can probably blame GM for that, it threw a spanner in the works by yanking the services of Will Arnett, who had been hired as the new voice of KITT, two weeks before airdate. He does voiceovers for GMC Trucks and they didn't want him apparently being the voice of a Ford Mustang.

Could GM be that hacked off at losing to Ford? It seems so. Ford Beat both GM and Chrysler to win.

We're already had the 'Bionic Woman' and the truly excellent 'Battlestar Galactica' return with much poorer ratings so a series could really be in the offing. The Los Angeles Times just hopes that someone figures out that the 80s are well and truly over:

Kerry Katona crazy in general

Did you tune in last night to MTV see the publicity machine that is Kerry Katona career onto the screens of her new reality show – 'Crazy in Love'? You must have seen the posters with the former Atomic Kitten trussed up in a straitjacket with her boyfriend just in case you thought all the laughs had gone out of mental illness.

I'm still trying to work out who on earth at MTV thought that signing Kerry Katona for a reality show was a good idea.

I know why she has done it, been persuaded to do it. She needs the money. She's broke and has a partner with expensive tastes in cars and gadgets.

But for MTV there seems little to recommend her. Did they see they Iceland ads and think kerching that's the car crash of a D-list that we need on our screens? Maybe not.

Did they read the tabloid stories of excess and bankruptcy and conclude that's the girl for us? They must have done.

Max Clifford, Kerry Katona's long time PR adviser, must be laughing his socks off having sold his one. How he must be asking himself did I pull that off? I don't know either Max, but all credit to you. You are indeed a Dark Lord of the Sith (PR division). No one else could have sold it.

I'm trying to imagine the pitch: "She's the UK's answer to Britney Spears, troubled, turbulent, but also talented, it will be like 'The Osbournes' all over again, tears and tantrums galore".

You can imagine MTV is hoping for some kind of 'Osbournes' style hit, but with that family there was at the heart of it a working business that revolved around Ozzy and Sharon.

With Kerry Katona there's nothing there, but celebrity. There is no substance. No rock band, nothing but the reality of the reality TV show. An empty box if you will. She does nothing apart from appear in Iceland ads, reality TV and in the tabloids. The News of the World welcomed in Katona's MTV debut with a double page spread on the rocky state of her relationship, which is all too evident if you watch a couple of clips on the MTV website of the couple rowing.

It brings us back to the straitjacket poster, which would be funny if it were not so close to the truth and MTV seems to be pleased to be around to film the whole thing as a heavily pregnant boozing smoker mother to be crashes and burns.

If only they could have got Britney Spears. Sadly someone is probably trying to sign her up as well while there is still something left to sign up.

Bin Laden calls for boycott of French clothes brand

In his latest rambling video pronouncement the world's most famous cave dweller Osama Bin Laden calls on a French clothes brand Attentats.

I've never heard of the brand before, but according to its website: "The Attentats (terrorist attacks) brand is not trying to justify terrorist attacks. Wearing Attentats means breaking with a society that lives in fear and apprehension. Wearing Attentats means asserting solidarity with all victims of terrorism. Attentats passes on part of the proceeds of sales to organisations that assist the victims of terrorist attacks. Nothing is stronger than an army of 6,500,000,000 survivors."

Shortlist and the circulation question

One of the most mulled over ABC results today will be that of free "men's magazine" Shortlist, which is expected to report an ABC of close to half a million.

I put the phrase "men's magazine" in quotes as, while it might put a lot of copies on the streets every Thursday, it is handed out to or taken by (there is a subtle difference), just about every soul who passes - meaning its distribution is indiscriminate.

That might not be a huge problem, but it is something of a problem if you are trying to tell advertisers that by buying space in your title they can reach young men aged 18-34.

This morning on my Piccadilly line train winding its way from North London to Baron's Court I saw it being read by at least a couple of women (clearly attracted by the pugnacious picture of Sylvester Stallone on the cover) and a number of other people who were not part of the youth market that advertisers are targeting.

Part of the problem is you cannot stop people reaching and taking the title even if they clearly do not fit the demographic. That is part of nature of free distribution. Besides imagine the ugly scene that could ensue.

Shortlist is refuting some of this anecdotal evidence about who the magazine is handed to and online research carried out by media and research consultancy Human Capital (done over a 3-4 week period with 854 responses) claimed that 86% of its readers are male and 82% are ABC1 and that the average age is 30.

It isn't, of course, a problem handing out the magazine to everyone who passes, but if that is the case, then more copies need to be on the street overall to account for those being read by people that advertisers are not looking to speak to.

As it is, the 460,000 that Shortlist is expected to report today as its ABC will have to be sliced and diced.

It might well be true that 200,000 more copies are given away each week than say Nuts or Zoo sell, but the guarantee to advertisers is that these people make active decisions to pick up those titles.

We already know that the value placed on them is different anyway. Many people do not hold onto their copy of Shortlist in the same way that they would for a magazine they have paid for like FHM, GQ or Nuts (although why you would want to own the latter is beyond me…but that is another debate).

In fact there are many reasons to hold onto Shortlist longer than you would the Metro. The content is good, the captions are funny, although the quality does seem to vary. Today's issue I think is one of their better ones with two big features: one on Sly and the other on the Baker Street bank robbery (it does seem to like its bank jobs). Plus it has a Q&A with My Name is Earl’s Jason Lee, always a reason to stop and read.

What we really need is more videos on YouTube of editorial director Mike Soutar, giving out detailed instructions to distributors. They should also get the rest of the staff involved in these as well. They would be a big hit.

Apparently Soutar does get involved in handing copies out. He wears a woolly orange hat. Look out for him.



What you mean you haven't seen Soutar's first YouTube video? Shame on you. This is great stuff. More please.

Brands and the Chinese Olympics

Are there any brands taking a principled stand over the Chinese Olympics? Not that I have noticed. Steven Spielberg has just withdrawn from his role as an artistic adviser to the Olympic Games in Beijing over Darfur, but Sudan is only part of the problem with China, which is after all a brutal totalitarian state - a fact that many are (trying to) neatly brush under the carpet.
If you look at Nike or Coca Cola's website you'll find nothing but smiles about the games. Other firms are rushing to join the bonanza that is China's bountiful market for consumer goods. I see even Sports Direct is on its way, selling great store fulls of knock-down sporting goods.

Spielberg explained that he was withdrawing from his involvement in the games because his conscience would "not allow me to continue with business as usual", while China continued to back the murderous Sudanese regime (for whom China is customer number one for its oil) that has cost the lives of 200,000 plus people and has resulted in much talk but little action. The arrival of a UN protection force to replace the under-resourced African peacekeeping force in Darfur has been endlessly delayed by Khartoum.

Spielberg said: "Sudan's government bears the bulk of the responsibility for these ongoing crimes, but the international community, and particularly China, should be doing more to end the continuing suffering there.

"China's economic, military and diplomatic ties to the government of Sudan continue to provide it with the opportunity and obligation to press for change," Spielberg said.

China has proved the huge stumbling block to action over Sudan’s actions in Darfur, but meanwhile our athletes head to Beijing to celebrate the Olympian spirit in a country that oppresses its own people and lends a helping hand to similar brutal regimes like the Sudanese government, which  has been complicit in forcing 2.5m out of their homes in an act of ethnic cleansing.

Hopefully Spielberg's decision will lead others to cut any ties with China and take a principled stand so lacking. This is the moment, if there was ever was one, to challenge China and persuade it to change its position and stop what is going on in the Darfur region. Liberal hand ringing alone has had little affect.

Spielberg's decision follows the row where the British Olympic Association tried to gag athletes and stop them saying anything political sensitive (just the word Darfur could do it, I'm guessing).

UK Olympians had been asked to sign a document prohibiting political demonstrations or propaganda, but after being publicly embarrassed by its clumsy efforts, the BOA is looking at the issue again.

China deserves this scrutiny and hopefully all the press and media who descend on this far from freedom-loving nation will have some positive outcome, but the BOA is not the only body that needs to look again at its conduct.

Mobile advertising... it's the future?

It's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Sun, sea and phones as well as lots of articles about how mobile advertising is the future, but to be honest I'm still having trouble seeing this. Maybe it's the size of my screen?
We're told that advertising on the small screen of mobile phones had a potential global market of 3bn plus. That's clearly huge and we're told that response rates will also be high.

I'm not sure why they should be. Yes, it is an incredibly personal experience, but people are as keen to avoid adverting in that space as they are in any other medium.

Despite all the talk, I can't help feeling that mobile as the (or a) future is hype with little basis in reality.

I use my phone a lot to email, surf the web, as well as make calls and SMS, and currently I see next to no advertising. Even if I do come across it I'm not really aware of it.

I've seen some cool and funky things on mobile phones such as games, tools and promotions, but none have struck me as great money spinners. Sure, I know it's early days and new services are planned that mobile operators hope will help them replace lost revenues and advertisers hope will offer new avenues, but mostly there seems to be a lot of hope there.

Yesterday, the UK's five mobile operators -- Vodafone, Orange, O2, T-Mobile and 3 -- announced that they are working together to develop common measurement standards for mobile advertising.

Vodafone claims that it gets a 2% click-through rate on banner ads on its mobile internet pages, according to a story in the FT, which is 10 times the response rate to ads on the fixed-line internet. I'm really surprised and almost shocked. Why would given wonky connection speeds and spazzy page loads would you click on an ad on your phone. Are these all adult ads?

I say this as I got a letter from Vodafone recently telling me it was ensuring its good customers had unlimited access to all content including adult. Is this going to be like VHS? Porn a-go-go?

I'm sure Google has plans and that will come to fruition when it launches its branded mobile handsets as part of its evil plan for us all to lead Google lives (I did say evil I know, I think Google has jumped the shark) while Yahoo!, if it is lucky, will get something done at some point that won't work all that well (unless Microsoft or someone else who knows what they are doing buys it and starts to run it properly).

Where I do see it working and maybe this is where some growth will happen is youth ad-funded services. Kids generally have no cash but a high desire to text and talk endlessly so services that are targeting them with free airtime or use of text messages are potentially useful to advertisers, but the flip side is they have little disposable income until you hit the 18- to 24-year-old bracket.

Some of this is borne out by analysts quoted by the FT today, who say high response rates are phantom and are probably more due to the novelty than anything else, but such novelty is being used as the basis for projections on the future of the mobile ad industry such as Informa's $8.4bn by 2012, up from $1bn today, or IDC's optimistic forecast of $11bn by 2011.

Compare this with the realism of Jupiter Research which says that even the EU, which has led the way on things mobile, has a small market. It puts the market at $1.8bn by 2012, which once you start to spread that around all of Western Europe is not a huge deal, considering how many firms are banking on getting a slice of that pie.

There's more on the Mobile Congress in the FT today.

Dude Hilary is running for president

The Democratic presidential race has been riveting and continues to be so as it heads for the wire. The ad campaigns have been contrasting. Hilary Clinton's latest made me laugh while a celebrity laden Barack Obama wins the cringworthy Oscar.I could, of course, be wrong, but the Hilary ad is funny. The president should have a sense of humour and be able to take a joke, you know, rather than be one. But Barack's ad (produced by supporters) just drives home more and more the idea that what he represents is not so much himself, but an idea and the idea appears mainly to be a nostalgia for a Martin Lutha King and JFK past. I know its part of his feel good message, but feel good gets old fast. Can he do it? Can she do it? With primaries in Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC voting today, I guess we'll know more in the morning.

An industry in peril

The New York Times today has a story about an industry at risk, with cuts being made across the board and thousands of jobs under threat. You guessed it: it's the newspaper business. US newspapers are having a hard time and the paper reports that in the last few weeks alone The San Diego Union-Tribune cut more than 100 jobs (a 10th of its wor force); the Chicago Sun-Times began a major round of newsroom layoffs and put itself up for sale; while publishers in Minneapolis and Philadelphia have warned of tough times ahead.

Last year the San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The San Jose Mercury News, USA Today and many others made similar reductions.

The New York Tomes Company itself revealed last week that it had cut its head count by 3.8% and the Mercury News has just 200 newsroom staff now, half as many as in 2000.

And it is one of those companies that have other non newspaper assets to fall back on with investors recently recommending it should invest more in digital assets.

This news comes in 2008 when the great and the good have said things are not so bad as we ride the quadrennial wave of the US Presidential elections and the Olympics, but it appears that while TV and the internet enjoys these spoils newspapers continue to suffer.

Next year is shaping up to be a bloodbath. These latest rounds of cuts follow the loss of another editor at the Los Angeles Times after James O'Shea walked after a dispute about newsroom budget cuts. He is the third editor to go since 2005.

The paper highlights a sobering fact as cash is invested into online operations, and many of these papers now have more readers online, but it is still not enough to balance finances.

But as the NY Times points out, for every dollar advertisers pay to reach a print reader, they pay about 5 cents, on average, to reach an internet reader and that is something newspapers need to change.

Part of that reason might lie in the fact that some critics accuse many US papers of having "done a poor job adapting to the internet" and the failing to be more creative with advertising.

Of course, this kind of talk about the demise of newspapers is not new. For instance, the Gannett Company's newspaper division, which owns USA Today and many local newspapers in the US and UK, had margins of 21% but suffered a 10% decline.

It seems to be getting much worse much quicker than expected and some papers will not make it. Last year, the march of classified advertising online speeded up.

We saw that here in the UK yesterday with the Daily Mail & General Trust. It reported classified advertising down 9% last year.

Brian Tierney, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News, told the NY Times: "I'm an optimist, but it is very hard to be positive about what's going on. The next few years are transitional, and I think some papers aren't going to make it."

Flippin' eck BBC cancels Grange Hill

School's out for good and the BBC has cancelled its long running kids TV programme' Grange Hill. The Sun has launched a campaign to save the show, but is it worth it? Or is really rather better to just let it go?

I clearly haven't watched it for years and am of that generation that has fond memories of the likes of Tucker Jenkins and his cohorts Alan Humphries, Benny Green and co whose most daring lines were "Flippin' eck" and "He's a nutjob".

Tucker, of course, went on to have his own spin-off ('Tucker's Luck') in which he went on "the dole" as he tried to find a job in the "real world".

Things have certainly changed. They did drugs, bullying and lesbians, but to reflect what goes on at some schools today it would make for some grim children's TV, which apparently has to appeal to eight year olds and not teenagers facing those real world issues. It appears at around 5pm there is no longer a place for what were at one time challenging and intelligent TV shows dealing with real issues and concerns.

Instead there is 'Doctor Who' spin-off 'The Sharh Jane Adventures', which is said to be charming and fun. Sort of like the 'Famous Five', but with aliens. 

Worth saving? Even possibly to save? Perhaps not. Gone and fondly remembered.

Zammo Maguire gets busted for smack

...which led to the cast hitting the charts