Media trifecta: sponsored columns, advertising banter and mega names

Normally I don’t hit a media-watch trifecta, but yesterday The New York Times served up one. One score was on the sports page; two were in the business section (of course).

The crumbling wall

First we have further erosion of the once purported impervious barrier between advertising and editorial content in newspapers. Now the Philadelphia Inquirer, under new management, is selling off “sponsored columns,” assuring its readers that the editorial integrity of said columns will be maintained.

Never mind the appearance of conflict of interest.

What’s to say that every newspaper reliant on advertising (and they all are) hadn’t sold out in its integrity long before this? Well the theory was that if you spread out the revenue source widely, no single part of the paper would suffer the loss of its independence.

Under the new game, advertisers can pick off individual columnists one by one.

I suppose there’s a model for this in broadcasting. If networks can sell whole programs to single sponsors, why can’t newspapers sell columnists to advertisers?

I fear that a newspaper industry spiraling to its demise just steepened its descent.

Shilling for dollars

Then there’s the curious situation in Dallas where our old friends at Clear Channel (they own most of Portland’s billboards and KPOJ) have dropped commercials — sort of — at its radio station, KZPS.

Instead of running real commercials, the announcers will weave plugs into their banter. “Excuse me a second while I take a gulp of my refreshing, delicious Coke” or “I sure do love the smell of my armpits today using this new Gillette roll-on” or “The traffic is bad out there this morning but I hope all you commuters are using Shell. You know I find it runs so much cleaner.”

A rose by any other name would be sponsored

Finally I'm ready to bestow my "how-many-sponsors-can-we-sell-a single-event-name-to?" award.

It goes to “the Subway Fresh Fit 500 Nextel Cup Race.”

That’s the Nascar race they ran in Arizona last Saturday.

The Times dutifully reported the entire bastardized moniker on its sports page, thereby helping lend value to the whole naming rights travesty.

But do race car fans actually call this motorized marathon between very sleek billboards on wheels "The Subway Fresh Fit 500 Nextel Cup Race"?

I don’t think so.

They leave that to the willing, laughable media.

By the way, I think I know the Subway and Nextel parts—but don’t try eating one while talking over the other.

But excuse me for a moment while I google what a “Fresh Fit 500 cup” is. I'm thinking some kind of jock strap or bra....

Well, who would have thought?

The race is 500 miles long and the “Fresh Fit” bit is actually a variety of Subway sandwich touting a lot fewer calories than Big Macs and Whoppers. Of course just about anything west of a New York cheese cake has fewer calories than the two bun burgers.

Oh, the name's unsold "Cup" part is still a container — I hope....

What's so "progressive" about billboards?

Portland Progressives may wonder what KPOJ-AM620, “Portland’s Progressive Radio Station,” is doing slathering its name on billboards around the city.

It so happens that the billboards and the radio station are owned by the same corporation, Clear Channel. That’s the very same outfit suing the city to make dozens of billboards even bigger.

I suggested here yesterday that, as taxpayers, we might save ourselves and our City big bucks if we snatch the billboard issue from the lawyers and publicly boycott Clear Channel advertisers who blight our landscape.

If you boycott KPOJ (with its ubiquitous three monkeys ad), you get a two-fer. You end up boycotting Clear Channel twice—as the station owner and as the billboard owner.

Ah, the perils of being a media conglomerate!

The downside: You have to forgo the insights and verve of talker Thom Hartmann for the duration…. Then again, he might just want to chat about his corporate "parent's" suing his adopted city.

How about it, Thom? Any thoughts about protecting "the Commons" from the folks who sign your check?

By the way, if you visit the Clear Channel site for buying billboard space in Portland you are treated some fascinating market statistics and a idyllic photo of a Portland notably and ironically unblighted by billboards.

Memo to Portland: Boycott billboard advertisers

The Oregonian featured a story today about Clear Channel's legal efforts to install bigger more intrusive billboards along Portland's Interstate corridors.

Back in the mid-90s, Hillsdale, Homestead and Bridlemile neighbors faced down Clear Channel (then it was AK Media) and won after the multi-media corporation had already installed a humongous sign at the corner of Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway and Shattuck, right across from Albertson's.

And, no, it didn't require a lawsuit like the one the City of Portland is enmeshed in.

All it took was the editor of the Southwest Community Connection (namely me) to print the phone numbers of the PR departments of the billboard advertisers as well at the number of the president of AK Media. (Yes, there are real flesh-and-blood, bad-publicity fearing people behind those slick corporate logos and intrusive signs.)

Each month, I urged readers to get on the phone, using my handy list of numbers, to call the advertisers (and the AK Media president) to say that this community was pledging to boycott all companies advertising on the billboard. My editorials vowed to run the phone numbers and the names of the offending and offensive advertisers until the sign came down.

Dozens responded conveying the word that advertising intrusion into our public "commons" would be counter-productive.

The advertisers got the message.

After the paid advertisers pulled out, AK Media was forced to give the space away to non-profits like the Portland Zoo. If you can't make money, at least you can go for the charitable tax write-off. Of course we got on the phones to Metro, which runs the Zoo, and Metro beat a retreat too.

Ultimately AK Media couldn't even give the space away, so the corporation finally took down the sign.

So why should the City of Portland using our money go to the expense of fighting Clear Channel's attorneys in court? Why don't we all just note who is advertising, post the phone numbers on-line, and then get on the phone or internet to say: "You know what, your advertising is going to bite you in your bottom...line."?