I Hate You, ‘American Idol’!

You’ve Ruined Everything! In the Whiny Spirit of the Show, 10 Great Reasons to Despise Pop Culture’s Most Powerful Juggernaut

The Media Guy

On the eve of the eighth-season premiere of “American Idol,” let’s take a moment to whine melodramatically about the collateral damage this TV juggernaut has inflicted on American culture.

1. Because for four full months a year, Fox puts these people in charge of American pop culture: (if you haven’t already seen this hilarious clip of a gang of heartbroken fangirls frrrrreeeeeeeaaaaaaaking out as David Archuleta fails to win the 2008 “Idol” crown, well, brace yourself).

2. Because the producers relish baiting not just the talentless and the tone-deaf, but the mentally ill. In November, Paula Goodspeed, a longtime stalker of “Idol” judge Paula Abdul, made headlines when she killed herself. Her death by apparent drug overdose, while she was sitting in her car not far from Abdul’s Los Angeles home, is obviously a tragic result of mental illness. But horrifyingly, it turned out that the “Idol” producers had baited Goodspeed. Abdul told Barbara Walters on Sirius XM radio: “I said, ‘This girl is a stalker of mine. Please do not let her in.’ Everyone knew. I was shaking.” Abdul added that over the course of 18 years (dating back to Adbul’s pop-star days), she’d sought restraining orders against Goodspeed, who’d sent her “disturbing letters.” Nonetheless, the “Idol” producers booked Goodspeed on the show as a contestant “for entertainment value,” as Abdul put it. “It’s fun for them to cause me stress. This was something that would make good television.”

Why Your Facebook Profile Isn’t Really Yours

Case Study: ‘Lactivists’ Vs. Social Net’s Privacy Policy

Facebook has ticked off various constituencies over the years with its various new-product introductions and policies, but recently it has pushed the button of one group that advertisers have learned are a force to be reckoned with: online moms. Specifically, in this case, lactivists — or breast-feeding advocates.

The group, “Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding Is Not Obscene,” was formed in the summer of 2007 to protest Facebook’s deletion of photos of breast-feeding moms and has spawned MILC — or Mothers International Lactation Campaign. The Facebook group totaled 61,000 members on Dec. 22 but added 25,000 members in the past week after several mainstream news outlets picked up on a virtual protest MILC had planned. The protest, held last Saturday, involved nursing moms staging a “virtual nurse-in” outside Facebook’s Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters and moms changing profile pictures to photos of women or animals nursing. According to the Facebook group, more than 11,000 people participated.

It’s worth noting that 11,000 out of Facebook’s 50.5 million November unique visitors, according to ComScore isn’t much in terms of sheer numbers. Of course, neither was the number of Twittering moms that caused Johnson & Johnson to change its Motrin ads after its mom-focused ad offended them (though that could have just as well been a case of the marketer taking the quickest path to silence). Facebook may be less easily swayed — it has yet to change its terms of service, which state that pictures exposing a full breast will be taken down.

And while I applaud exercises of free speech, here’s the point I don’t get: Facebook isn’t saying photos of women breast-feeding won’t be allowed on its site; it’s saying only pictures that expose the full breast will be taken down — whether they involve breast-feeding or baring it all to sell beer. It seems the biggest issue for breast-feeding activists is the implication that there’s something sexual about breast-feeding, just as there’s something sexual about using boobs to sell beer. On a personal level, I don’t think there’s anything sexual about it, but it does seem as though there’s something intimate about it — the sort of intimacy I wouldn’t want to plaster all over Facebook, which is a public site, after all.

Regardless, it’s a reminder that for as much time as people spend pimping out Facebook profiles, those profiles aren’t yours and yours only. They’re Facebook’s, essentially. And Facebook’s terms of service are in line with other media companies. When the St. Petersburg Times wrote about the protest, it noted that Facebook called the paper’s advertising department and asked whether an ad could be placed related to breast-feeding that showed a woman with her breast fully exposed. It was told the ad would need to be reviewed and that such an image would not generally be allowed in the paper.

If you want to post photos of breast-feeding, then go start up your own website to do so. In fact, that’s what MILC has done: It made a place to collect all the photos Facebook has removed.

YouTube Pulls Warner Music Videos

Impasse Signals Tough Road as Licensing Deals Expire

After talks to renew a licensing deal failed, Warner Music Group pulled its songs from YouTube in what could be an opening salvo in a battle between the music business and the world’s largest video site.

Warner musicians have generated more than a trillion views on YouTube, according to web video services firm TubeMogul.

Warner Music was the first major label to ink a deal with YouTube shortly before Google acquired the video site in 2006. The pact paid the label a minimum fee or a percentage of the ad revenue generated by videos uploaded to the site.

Impasse
That deal expired months ago, a Warner spokesman told The New York Times. Universal Music Group, SonyBMG and EMI also have licensing deals with YouTube. Universal and SonyBMG are in talks to renew their deals, which expire in the next few months, according to The Wall Street Journal. After weeks of failed talks, Google notified users of the impasse and started blocking access to videos from Warner artists over the weekend.

“Despite our constant efforts, it isn’t always possible to maintain these innovative agreements,” YouTube said in a blog entry. “Sometimes, if we can’t reach acceptable business terms, we must part ways with successful partners.”

Music videos account for the biggest percentage of viewing on YouTube. Forty-seven of the top 100 most-watched creators on YouTube are musicians or labels; to date, Warner musicians have generated more than a trillion views, according to web video services firm TubeMogul. Warner accounts for 21% of the recorded music market in the U.S.

Warner responds
“We are working actively to find a resolution with YouTube that would enable the return of our artists’ content to the site,” Warner said, in a statement. “Until then, we simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide.”

The Warner dispute could be the first of many as the labels renegotiate deals struck back in YouTube’s infancy. Since then, the video service has grown into the largest video site, accounting for nearly 40% of all video views in the U.S., the second-largest search engine, and the fourth-largest website in the world.

3 Minute Ad Age

Student Invention Show Popular With Ad Agency Recruiters

Students Alex Abreu and Stella Kim have devised a new sort of social-networking product.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — During the last few years, New York University’s Tisch School of Arts has become a place of great interest for ad agency recruiters. Its Interactive Telecommunications Program mixes a curriculum of arts studies with the latest communications technologies. And twice each year, students demonstrate their ideas for new communications products. We attended last week’s show and found some of the concepts a bit nutty but several others appeared to have real commercial messaging potential.

Top 5 Ads of the Year:

Goodby’s NBA Split Screen; TBWA’s Skittles Genius; Obama’s Political Machine; Fincher and Nike on Fate; CNN T-shirts

This week’s episode of Creativity’s Top 5 marks the end of year with an attempt to whittle our 2008 favorites down to five. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners’ split screen for the NBA had its pop culture moment thanks to “Saturday Night Live” and Time magazine; TBWA/Chiat/Day, New York, continued the bizarre genius for Skittles with a human pinata; The Barbarian Group helped people wear their favorite news; Barack Obama became president-elect thanks to a well-oiled campaign machine and notable artistic contributions from the creative community; and David Fincher beautifully directed destiny for Nike.

NBA: “LeBron & Garnett”

Agency: Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
Executive Creative Director/Copywriter: Jamie Barrett
Associate Creative Director/Copywriter: Ari Weiss
Associate Creative Director/Art Director: Stefan Copiz

Skittles: “Pinata”

Agency: TBWA/Chiat/Day, New York
Executive Creative Director: Gerry Graf
Group Creative Directors: Ian Reichenthal, Scott Vitrone

CNN: CNN T-shirts

Agency: The Barbarian Group
Website: http://www.cnn.com/tshirt/

Obama Presidential Campaign

Nike: “Fate”

Agency: Wieden & Kennedy, Portland
Creative Directors: Jeff Williams, Alberto Ponte, Tyler Whisnand