ABC Bars the Door to 'Katie'; No 3rd Season for Gabfest

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High costs and disappointing ratings combined to sink Katie, Katie Couric's syndicated daytime yakathon, which will not return for a third season, the show's distributor, Disney-ABC Domestic TV, announced this week.

As reported in Ad Age, Capitalnewyork.com and elsewhere, Katie will cease production in June 2014, and air reruns through next September. The show's debut in September 2012, drew record ratings, and the gabfest ratings remained in the top 10 among daytime syndicated programs, but was expensive to produce and had seen its audience wane.

Couric, who reportedly pulled down a cool $20 million to join ABC (see "TUOL" post 6/6/11), recently announced plans to join Yahoo! as the Web site's global news anchor (see "TUOL" post 11/25/13).

Gun Mag Editor & Columnist Blasted; Lose Jobs Over Pro-Regulation Piece

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Guns & Ammo editor in chief Jim Bequette resigned, and contributing editor Dick Metcalf is out the door after Metcalf's last-page column in the December issue arguing gun regulation doesn't abridge Second Amendment rights backfired, drawing a hale of criticism from readers and threats of an advertising boycott.

Ad Age reported that Bequette apologized to readers for Metcalf's column in which Metcalf wrote: "The fact is all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be." The contributing editor went on to write: "I don't think that requiring 16 hours of training to qualify for a concealed carry license is infringement in and of itself."  Heresy.

Guns & Ammo and parent company InterMedia Outdoors silently endured a barrage of online demands from readers that Metcalf be terminated, along with threats of cancelled subscriptions and advertiser boycotts, according to Ad Age. In his apology, Bequette said he miscalculated in believing the column would generate a discussion of gun regulation, and apologized for deviating from the magazine's unwavering commitment to the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Apparently, Guns & Ammo subscribers will only accept an author shooting off his mouth if it happens accidentally while cleaning a rifle.

Dr. Oz Gives Till It Hearst

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We're just a couple of weeks away from Hearst Corp., publisher of Esquire and Cosmopolitan, unveiling the name of a new magazine that will be branded around celebrity doc Mehmet Oz, Ad Age reports.

According to Ad Age, the periodical's title may be The Good Life and will somehow work in the name of Dr. Oz. And why not, given that the 53-year-old cardiothoracic surgeon has been a hot property since first appearing on Oprah Winfrey's show in 2004, which led to his own series beginning in 2009, cleverly named The Dr. Oz Show.

The Cleveland native, whose parents are Turkish emigrants, has written for numerous Hearst magazines. His own journal is expected to focus on food, beauty, and physical and emotional well-being, according to the Ad Age article. Two pilot issues are expected to debut in 2014, and Ad Age reports the initial issue will have a rollout of 350,000 newsstand copies, while another 450,000 copies will be sent to subscribers of other select Hearst titles.

The magazine publisher is hoping to capture lightning in a bottle in ways that the disappointing O: The Oprah Magazine has not.  It remains to be seen whether a celebrity physician can cure the sagging ad revenues and circulation that afflict magazines nowadays.

Open your mouth and say: "Oz."

Web Ads Displayed, but Ignored, Study Says

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Companies doling out serious scratch for prominent online display ads will be distressed to learn that 46 percent of visitors to Web sites don't even see the ads, according to a new study reported in Ad Age.

ComScore's Validated Campaign Essentials ("VCE") tracking service found viewability of online ads by Web visitors was nothing to write home about, ComScore chair Gian Fulgoni told attendees this week in New York City at the Advertising Research Foundation Audience Measurement 8.0 Conference, Ad Age reported. Twenty-two of the nation's 25 largest advertisers subscribe to the VCE service.

Adhering to the minimum standard endorsed by the Media Rating Council and Making Measurement Make Sense(3MS), Comscore measures viewability by considering an online ad viewable if a minimum 50 percent of pixels are visible to a site visitor for at least a half-second. The Ad Age article noted the importance of viewability to companies, citing how a 40 percent jump in viewability of digital ads by Kellogg yielded a 75 percent increase in sales life from online advertising.

Report Predicts 4 More Years of Newspapers Hemorrhaging Ad Revenues

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The good news is that digital versions of newspapers are beginning to attract more readers. The bad news, according to the annual PricewaterhouseCooper's Global Entertainment and Media Outlook report ("GEMO") released this week, is that newspapers' revenues overall will continue to plunge through at least 2017.

According to an Ad Age article about the report, even in the face of climbing circulation figures, declining advertising at a compound annual rate of 4.2 percent means overall newspaper revenues are forecast to drop at a combined annual growth rate of 2.9 percent between 2013-2017.

The Ad Age piece cites Newspaper Association of America 2012 figures showing newspaper Web sites attracted more than 100 million unique visitors. The GEMO report predicts a 9.7 percent compound annual growth rate in digital advertising over the next four years that, unfortunately, will largely be negated by a 7.8 percent compound annual drop-off in print edition ads.

Digital newspaper ads are expected to generate $5.5 billion in revenues by 2017, compared to $12.8 billion in print ads, according to the GEMO study.

British Invasion: The Sequel

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Bucking the trend of retrenching by news organizations, BBC.com is bolstering its Washington, D.C. bureau with 10 journalists devoted to covering U.S. politics, general news, entertainment and sports,  Ad Age reports.

Hewlett-Packard will be an advertising launch partner for BBC.com, which  boasts an in-house sales force of 25, based in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.  According to ComScore, BBC.com attracts 17.4 million U.S. readers.

BBC Worldwide, the parent of BBC.com and BBC Worldwide America, generated $1.6 billion in revenue last year. As a public trust, the BBC website can't advertise on United Kingdom-based computers, but that restriction does not apply to non-Commonwealth outlets, such as the U.S., a major source of ad revenue.  The Ad Age story quotes a BBC.com vice president, who claims the subsidiary tripled its ad revenue last year.

Jolly good.

ESPN Allows 'Chosen One' to Choose Everything

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Okay, "TUOL" concedes we're not talking about Walter Cronkite surrendering control of the content on the CBS Evening News or Ted Koppel allowing Nightline to air a 30-minute infomerical.

Still, ESPN has lowered the bar with l'affaire LeBron James, as chronicled by Ad Age and The New York Times.  For the NBA-challenged among you, LeBron James, a/k/a the "Chosen One," is one of the best pro basketball players on the planet and a free agent.  His long-time team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, has been desperately trying to re-sign him to a megadeal, as have suitors, including the New York Knicks, NJ Nets, Miami Heat and the Chicago Bulls.

James will decide which team's barrel of money he will accept this evening, but it's how the public will learn of his choice that rubs "TUOL" the wrong way.  An hour-long special, cleverly called "The Decision," will air on Disney-owned ESPN this evening at 9 and is sure to be a cable ratings monster.

On the positive side of the ledger, the ad revenues generated by the show will be given over to the Boys & Girls Club of America. Otherwise, it's a dark day for sports journalism.  ESPN has also allowed James to choose the journalist to whom he will make his grand pronouncement. James will share the scoop (but not his money) with freelance journalist and former ESPN reporter Jim Gray, though ESPN NBA analyst Michael Wilbon will also be on-hand to ask a question or two.

ESPN apparently now stands for "Every Superstar Prescribes News." Imagine the influence James would exert if he ever managed an NBA championship as Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan have done so many times.

News Media Favorite Source: Outsource?

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AdAge.com reports today on a growing trend  among media outlets battered by declining ad revenues and shrinking readership--the use of stables of poorly paid freelancers to provide news content.

Companies such as Santa Monica, Calif.-based Demand Media, Associated Content in Denver, Colo., and New York-based America Online's SEED are providing articles to media giants such as Cox Newspapers, Hachette Filipacchi, and Thomson Reuters.  Freelancers from Associated Content have submitted articles to Woman's Day's Web site and the Atlanta-Constitution, while Demand Media writers regularly are featured in USA Today's Travel Tips section, according to AdAge.com.  Reuters.com has drawn on Associated Content for a series of articles about the economy.

Outsourcing articles previously written by staff reporters is a cost-savings measure. Associated Content, for example, can drawfrom its ranks of 350,000 writers to produce content for which the freelancers are paid anywhere from $5 to $30 per article.  Third party news writing is here to stay,which makes the devoted staff at "TUOL" uneasy and queasy.