Dead Blogging The Rumpus In Boca Raton

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

The hardworking staff half-listened-to/half-watched last night’s third and final presidential debate (video excerpts and transcript here, via the Washington Post), and this is what we thought (no quotes verbatim):

• If you picked tumult, comprehensive strategy, or wrongandreckless for your drinking game, you were sleeping over wherever you watched the debate telecast.

• Obama is taking the fight to Romney, a mirror image of their first debate. Via TPM LiveWire:

“Gov. Romney, I’m glad you recognize al-Qaeda is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what is the biggest geopolitical group facing America, you said Russia — not al-Qaeda. And the 1980’s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back — because the Cold War has been over for 20 years. But Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980’s, just like the social policy of the 1950’s, and the economic policies of the 1920’s.”

• Romney: “I don’t concur with Pres. Obama’s about my record.” Don’t concur? That the best you got, Mitt?

• Romney recurring theme: “Attacking me is not an agenda.” That sounded more and more whiney as the evening wore on.

• Romney passes on Libya. Is he playing not to lose? If so, he’s lost.

• Funny, but split-screen Romney looks more worried than smug tonight.

• Romney goes on the offensive re: Iran, apology tour.

• Obama: Apology tour “biggest whopper of the campaign.”

• Romney Apology Tour, Take Two: Obama skipped Israel, said U.S. was “dismissive and derisive” and “dictated to other nations.”

• Obama: At last when I went to Israel as a candidate in 2008, I went without donors in tow and without staging fundraising events.

• Round to: Obama.

• Did Bob Schieffer just say “Obama bin Laden”?

• Prediction: Romney will label Big Bird a currency manipulator before he slaps that label on China.

• It’s Obama who’s got the death stare going tonight. And it’s Romney who’s halting and hesitant.

• Closing statements: Don’t really matter.

Then again, this debate doesn’t really matter, either. But it’s got to have the Obamanauts beaming.

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It’s Good To Live In A Two-Daily Town (Taylor-Made: Split Decision On Swift’s New Album)

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Today’s local dailies have polar opposite reviews of Taylor Swift’s new album.

Start with James Reed’s piece in the Boston Globe . . .

See the rest at IGTLTDT. (Bonus gossip at end of post.)

 

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Rest Easy, Brookliners: The Single-Space Parking Meters Are Back In Coolidge Corner

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

As the hardworking staff noted last spring, there’s been a major kerfuffle in Brookline over the parking meters in Coolidge Corner and elsewhere.

The People’s Republic of Brookline is all aTwitter over the new multispace parking meters that recently replaced single-space meters around town.

From Sunday’s Boston Globe:

Outcry over new parking meters

An outcry against the multispace parking meters that replaced hundreds of single-space meters in Brookline last year has convinced Town Administrator Mel Kleckner that it’s time for the town to reverse course.

Kleckner is proposing a plan to remove almost all of the multispace meters that were installed along Brookline streets at the beginning of 2011 at a cost of more than $1 million. Hired by the town in the fall of 2010, Kleckner said he’s been dealing with complaints about the multispace meter system through most of his tenure.

“I just don’t think it’s convenient enough, and for whatever reason it has really created a problem,” said Kleckner. “It’s a big problem. I think it makes the town look bad.”

Well, the multispace meters now have plastic garbage bags covering them, and the single-space meters are back in place.

So does that make the town look good? Or just one million dollars worse?

Back in the ’70s, our great friend Kate Whelan coined the phrase “Foolish Corner” (George’s Folly was still in business then).

She didn’t know the half of it.

 

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Advertisers Try To Derail Do Not Track Movement

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Pity the poor online marketers. Their unfettered access to your consumer data is being threatened, and they don’t like it.

From last Sunday’s New York Times:

Do Not Track? Advertisers Say ‘Don’t Tread on Us’

THE campaign to defang the “Do Not Track” movement began late last month.

Do Not Track mechanisms are features on browsers — like Mozilla’s Firefox — that give consumers the option of sending out digital signals asking companies to stop collecting information about their online activities for purposes of targeted advertising.

Can’t have that, right?

Read the rest at Sneak Adtack.

 

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It’s Good To Live In A Two-Daily Town (Brian McGrory: Assignment Desk For The Boston Herald)

Posted on October 21, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

On Friday, Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory submitted this piece (boink! sorry, paywall):

Ads up; it’s just way too much

I was walking near Copley Square one recent morning when I made a profound mistake. I stopped to appreciate the scenery . . .

Read the rest at IGTLTDT.

 

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It’s Good To Live In A Two-Daily Town (‘Scout’ Brown In The Boston Herald)

Posted on October 21, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

The thoroughly reprehensible Boy Scout scandal got – wait for it – very different coverage in Saturday’s local dailies . . .

Read the rest at IGTLTDT.

 

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Dead Blogging ‘American Vanguards’ At The Addison Gallery

Posted on October 21, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

So the Missus and I trundled up to Andover yesterday to catch the American Vanguards: Graham, Davis, Gorky, De Kooning, and Their Circle, 1927-1942 at the Addison Gallery of American Art.

And it’s a corker.

John Graham, Stuart Davis, and Arshile Gorky were the “Three Musketeers” of American modernism in the first half of the 20th century. Willem de Kooning became the D’Artagnan of the tight-knit circle, which also included David Smith, Jackson Pollack, Edgar Levy, Jan Matulka, and others.

Representative samples:

Graham’s 1929 Table Top Still Life with Bird

 

 

Edgar Levy’s 1938 Figure in Yellow Window

 

 

David Smith’s 1939 Structure of Arches

 

 

Go see the rest. They’re well worth the trip.

 

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State-of-the-Cuisinart Marketing: How To Blur The Line Between Advertising And Editorial Content

Posted on October 20, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Once upon a time, there was a bright line between advertising and editorial content/entertainment.

As in, here’s where the news content stops and the advertising starts; or here’s where the entertainment programming stops and the advertising starts.

No more.

Marketers and news organizations are now doing their best to redefine advertising as “just like editorial content,” as one Forbes Media executive explained.

Start with news media distributing brand-produced videos cheek-by-jowl with news videos.

From MediaPost:

The Natives Are Restless: News Publishers Move Line Distinguishing Edit, Ad Content

If there is a red line delineating the church and state of journalism, some big news publishers have just crossed it — introducing a spate of new “native” advertising formats that blur the line between advertising and editorial content in new ways, including brand-produced videos served directly in the news organizations’ video news players. The publishers, which include NBC News and Forbes, are not sheepish, much less apologetic about moving the line more to the advertisers’ side of the ledger, but say it is part of an inexorable — indeed an inevitable — shift merging the “storytelling” of their organic journalism with those of their advertisers.

It’s all about new revenue models, the newsvertising organizations say, “as well as changes in the way consumers — especially digital users — consume and even think about news content . . . ”

For further details, see Sneak Adtack.

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It’s Good To Live In A Two-Daily Town (Who Hates The Yankees More: The Globe Or The Herald?)

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Red Sox Nation – and the Boston dailies – are relishing the meltdown of the Bronx Bummers. So who’s hatin’ on the Yankees the most? You might – or might not – be surprised. Details at IGTLTDT.

 

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Did WGBH Run New Hampshire Public Television Out Of The Bay State?

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Campaign Outsider

Several days ago the hardwatching staff noticed that Channel 11 and Channel 44 were missing from our television.

So we tasked (as they say) our Investigative Unit (aka the Missus) to find out what was up.

And here it is:

Channel 11 (New Hampshire Public Television) is no longer available to Massachusetts Comcast subscribers.

Channel 44 (WGBX) is now located at Channel 16 on your Comcast dial.

Handy WGBH chart:

According to credible sources, “Massachusetts PBS” grew tired of competing for viewers with “New Hampshire PBS.” So it leaned on Comcast to dump NHPTV in the Bay State.

Why, subsequently, WGBX moved from its established identity as Ch. 44 to Ch. 16 is not clear, although it’s reasonable to believe that the Boston public broadcaster just wanted a lower dial position.

Which – how to put this – was totally idiotic, since the Ch. 44 audience has a VCR flashing 12 o’clock . . . 12 o’clock . . . 12 o’clock . . . and is the last group in the world that might chase a TV station across the cable universe.

Then again, WGBH management are the same people who thought converting 89.7 FM into a news/talk radio station living off WBUR’s rejects was a good idea.

(Full disclosure: The hardworking staff used to work at WGBH. We no longer do. And we currently contribute analysis to WBUR. But that doesn’t mean we’ve gone stupid.)

WGBH, on the other hand, well . . . you be the judge.

P.S. WGBX’s move to Comcast Ch. 16 has displaced the Lifetime Channel, which currently only exists in HD format. More shuffling, no doubt, to come.

 

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