MediaFlect

In the current issue of Radar, Editor Maer Roshan bemoans the sameness of magazine covers: “You can’t just slap a picture of Nicole Kidman on your ocver and expect people to say, ‘Wow, what a cover!’ It’s just another picture of Nicole. Who gives a shit?”

He contrasts that with what calls the social commentary of his current cover: Tom Cruise in his underwear (a la “Risky Business”) with arrows through him (a la Jesus?) after his Scientology meltdown.

I’ve often wondered the same thing Roshan alludes to: How come mag after mag after mag fronts the ingenue-du-jour, whether Kidman or Hilary Duff or Lindsay Lohan or even Paris Hilton? When all the mags come out at the same time with the same person on their covers, do they really all sell? Are magazines that finely segmented that the audience will buy their mag if it has the celeb of the moment? Or are folks so mad about whomever it is that they’ll stuff their bathroom mag racks with a half-dozen magazines sporting the same person, albeit in different hair, makeup and clothes?

I can understand when, say, Jennifer Aniston appears on the cover of Vanity Fair with what appears to be a real scoop — talking about her split with Brad Pitt — and a few celebrity weeklies parasitically pick that up and put her on their covers with the same story, inside refering to VF’s effort. But what gives when there’s really nothing but press-agent created buzz around, perhaps, a new album or movie, or some mysterious artificial zeitgeist? How many can survive when the market gets that finely sliced, and more sliced all the time?

Meanwhile, I find it amusing that the wonderfully self-promotional Roshan derides other magazines for being derivative not long after Kurt Andersen savaged Roshan’s own effort with Radar for being derivative of Andersen’s Spy as well as other magazines:

“Radar’s fundamental problem is that all of it—the good, the bad, the mediocre—is extremely familiar. There is not a moment of shock or wonder, not a whiff of the strange or novel. At a time when glossy journalism tends to be very dull and similar, Radar is, alas, a wholly recursive exercise in recombinant magazine-making. We have seen every bit of it before.”

I’ve looked at one issue of Radar (the second since relaunch) and don’t feel I can pass judgment yet, but I do agree with Andersen that the Website is worth the time, and finding its footing well. I do wish I could read the magazine online. I think TimeWarner has the equation right: If someone’s willing to pay, let them see the magazine online. why should I have to refer to a print copy if I’m willing to cough up my bucks to read it in a format I prefer?

“Viewers who use their mobile phones to interact with TV shows are more likely to tune in again and to tell friends about the shows — interest that generates higher ratings and ad revenues,” says a finding from the McKinsey consulting company. It continues: “McKinsey research suggests that viewers who use their mobile phones to send text messages to TV shows, either to vote in a competition or take part in a dialogue, are highly engaged and more likely to tune in again, to tell friends about the shows, and even to buy related merchandise. This added interest can increase ratings by as much as 20 percent for mainstream shows and 100 percent for niche ones.” Based on research in Europe.

With U.S. senators about to demand that the makers of Grand Theft Auto close a backdoor that allows characters to have sex, maybe sales of the game will spike as folks rush to get it before the door is closed. (Brilliant marketing that. And any sexual innuendo in previous sentences is unintentional.)

My friend Daniel Gross points out the absurdity of letting our young folk blow characters up, but G-D forbid they be allowed to have them make love. Is it cuz Danyell and I are both children of the 60s and 70s? I think we’re both just rational.

I notice an increasingly popular trend in movies over the past few years: mixing media into the credits. Even the wonderful documentary “Mad Hot Ballroom” has fun and funny film snippets as the end credits roll by, which is great enticement to sit all the way through past the key grips and location crews to the music credits.

I wonder if there’s something like that we can use for content Web sites — a lot of whom fight the tendency of users to go in and out after 1-3 pageviews. The production manager of one Web site I worked for had an idea of having a “bobblehead” competition, in which the bobbleheads would be placed around the site, and people would hunt for them, getting points toward prizes if they clicked. An intresting gimicky idea, but it actually works against the content — yes, people would click around, and pageviews for session, on aggregate, could rise for the length of the promotion, but I bet there are some ideas for mixing in fun stuff that’s relevant to the mission of the site.